


violent reflections

by antarcticas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Dark Zuko (Avatar), Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dubious Ethics, F/M, Introspection, Memory Loss, Not Happy, Realistic, Unreliable Narrator, Zutara, capture fic, everyone is messed up, heed tags!, technically zutara
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/pseuds/antarcticas
Summary: Katara traps herself inside of her mind when she gets captured by the Fire Prince.[Previously titled 'time takes these angry and violent things'; a dark take on a capture fic.]
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 143
Kudos: 282





	1. every time you open your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Heed tags. Technically dubious consent in the relationship because Katara isn't quite sure of who she is and who Zuko really is.

**infinity times infinity**

She doesn’t remember  _ how  _ it happened as much as she remembers every detail of what followed.

Aang’s eyes, Sokka’s yell, the way the Fire Prince had smirked, his uncle’s startling cries. And then her mind had gone black and blank.

That was the last time she had seen the sun. Now the darkness sits on her head like a vice. She misses the sky, the sea, even the brisk weather of the pole. She knows that the ship is no longer there because the air’s humidity has increased. She’d tried to bend it but her arms had failed to move.

She’s not physically weak. They feed her and clothe her. But mentally she’s falling apart and bending takes  _ willpower.  _ She doesn’t have much of that in this dingy cell with her only human interaction being the motion of pails of water and food pushed in here once in a while. She thinks she’s losing her mind. It’s been too long. She tries to count lines in the wall but she can’t accurately understand the movements of the sun from so deep inside the ship.

At first she thought that Sokka and Aang would come for her. Maybe her father. But they haven’t yet and a large part of her has given up. Sometimes she clutches her mother’s betrothal necklace and just stares at the wall. She hopes that they will win, at least. 

She’s doing this when her door creaks open for the first time in  _ ages  _ — the smaller window her food comes through isn’t large enough to fit her. She’d tried it many times before she settled into her fate. The opening is accompanied by a little bit of light and she ducks her head down to avoid it from getting into her eyes. A part of her thinks about escaping but in a blink it’s gone.

When her eyes adjust there is an old man in front of her, his eyes wide and hair long. His features are so pale and Fire Nation and well-groomed and she knows who this is. She recalls a name and an uncle. Anger is at the forefront of her mind but she compartmentalizes it and just stares at him with her eyes wide. She doesn’t care what he wants. She won’t feel it. She keeps the Katara that would be in a box in her mind — the Katara who can bend a little, and who played with the children, and who was always strong and incendiary. The man’s eyebrows furrow and he almost looks  _ concerned.  _

She remembers how that happened. The way he drew her outside and had her replace her clothes, had her put into another room. The apologetic look on his face, the tea he joined her for every day. She didn’t talk for as long as she could even though her insides screamed at her. It had been so long since she’d spoken.

She remembers him saying that it had been half a year. That doesn’t feel that long. She’d felt like she was in there forever. When he says that she frowns but does not say anything and finishes her tea. He looks at her with sheer misery written across his face. 

Often she thinks about Sokka and her father and the airbender. She knows that the boy who had trapped her here, the disgraced Fire Nation boy, is no longer here, and she feels a little safe. One day she lets Iroh accompany her to the deck of the ship. Her clothes are red, fire red, and they show off her bony ribs and lost allegiance. The sun blinds her but the sea doesn’t call her anymore. She wants to reach out to the waves inside of her but they don’t seem to reciprocate. It’s as if they don’t belong to her. 

That is when she opens her mouth again to ask the old man the only question in her mind. Her voice cracks, unused as it is. He never talks to her about war. “Where is the Avatar?”

His eyebrow moves up before he looks utterly devastated, as if he’s just now realizing how lost she is. “Dead.”

She goes down to her room with her face stuck in a  _ nowhere.  _ There is no place to go from here. Sometimes she is angry at herself for being weak; sometimes she is glad that she is anything.

**/**

**dust of dust**

The Fire Nation Prince is back. She has hatred in her heart for him. Even though she can’t remember that moment very well. She’s sure he has destroyed everything she has ever loved. Her mother’s necklace is alive against her chest. There is color in her cheeks again.

She stays in her room and Iroh does not ask her to come out. It’s when she’s walking the hall to see the sky once more that she is stopped by a  _ man  _ who has a scar across his face. He looks familiar to the old Katara, but the new one does not know who she is looking at. He gives her a strange and imperious glance before growing confused.

“You’re the water tribe girl.”

Some part of her nods.

“You are still here?”

Her head moves; she cannot tell what direction but it seems to pacify him. She does not want him to be angry. The box is trying to tell her something. 

Iroh moves in the hallway behind him, and he is there before she has a second to think, between the two of them. “Zuko,” he says, his voice cautionary. “I trust you are not bothering Katara?”

He sounds angry. Iroh is never angry. Katara frowns and the man named  _ Zuko  _ is staring her in her eyes. She isn’t here right now but she thinks his are gold. Strange. 

“Katara,” he breathes. “The Avatar’s friend, wasn’t she? A prisoner?”

“The war is over,  _ nephew,”  _ he spits. “She is my guest.”

“Very well, Katara,” he sounds out, looking over her. “It is my  _ pleasure  _ to see you again.”

Iroh looks terrified as the other man retreats, and she points her head out in inquiry. The man is odd but he was not  _ rude,  _ was he? He at least tried to talk to her, unlike the others on the ship. “Stay away from him, Katara.”

She blinks.   
  


“Do you understand? Stay away!”

/

**dark and dark**

Iroh isn’t there the next time she sees him. They’re alone. It’s just them. The sky is dark and he is breathing fire.

She quirks her eyebrows at that. Iroh never firebends in front of her. It’s strange to see how the flames reflect in the moon’s light. When he notices her he stops and beckons her over to him. She doesn’t remember her feet moving but they do, and then she is a few feet away from him. He is warm.

“You’re a waterbender, aren’t you? You tried to waterbend.”

Her mind is confused. She thinks about it for a second and then gives him a slightly beseeching look. He doesn’t look especially cruel as he glances at her. “Can you waterbend?”

She shakes her head. His eyes are stormy but they look like they are having a revelation. “No,” he says, delicately, “you can’t, can you?”

She just stares at him and he takes his warm hand and places it over hers. She jumps a little at the heat but then settles into it. It feels fine. She can live with it. She can. Her box  _ screeches  _ and she closes her eyes trying to keep it closed. She doesn’t care what’s inside of it anymore. She wants to throw away old Katara.

His eyes are on her and she is empty. And then he starts talking. “I am taking back the Fire Nation.”

She doesn’t quite grasp what that means so she stays still. “My uncle thinks I am a terrible person. I wanted my honor. My sister and I are taking it back,” he sighs. “Do you think I am a terrible person?”

He wants an answer, and she doesn’t truly know, so she shakes her head. “I am, am I not? Who are you? What happened to you?”

The box has a lot of answers to that question but she stays quiet and frozen. What happened to her? She is nothing and nobody. Her mind is not hers even if her body barely is.

His fingers wrap around hers and hers incrementally tighten as well. “Will you be here, tomorrow?”

Some part of her is scared of consequences, so she goes. 

/

**young and young**

Iroh comes to see her sometimes. Azula has long grown tired of her and the way she doesn’t react to her instigations. Zuko spends his spare moments with her but she usually sits alone in the courtyard.

She’s an outsider here but more people give her pitying glances than incendiary ones. She’s the Fire Lord’s poor Water Tribe girl, not a concubine but not distinguished, a war prize of no victory. She gets respect if nothing else. She doesn’t really care.

She likes sitting in the courtyard and playing with the turtleducks. She likes staring out the window. She likes going around in the markets and seeing the people who are  _ happy  _ now that the war is over. She likes seeing their emotions because she has none. 

She just  _ exists.  _ And somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels like that is why Zuko likes her —  _ loves  _ her, he says. She is a mistake and she is pliant to his fixations. He cannot fix everything he has done but he can bandage over her mind.

He’s not so terrible, she will admit. But the box sings  _ he is her captor he does not have a right to touch you this is not peace  _ and she places it back. To open it would be to acknowledge conflict. She doesn’t want to. There is nothing left of old Katara and she doesn’t want to upset anyone and have to go back in a cell. Zuko lets her do everything but leave him. 

Where would she go?

She speaks in small sentences. “Yes,” she will go for her dress fitting. “No,” she does not want tea today. She is treated like glass. Sometimes even Azula gives her a look of sadness and tries to cajole more out of her, but she stares blankly.

In bed, she moans when she needs to and breathes small words while he talks for both of them. He weaves tales about love and sacrifice and everything to her and she  _ listens  _ but does not comprehend. 

“I love you, so, so much, Katara,” he breathes and pants. “My princess.”

She’s surprised when he gives her a necklace.

/

**infinity times infinity times infinity**

She wanders the market stalls, the guard behind her keeping a slight distance. She likes observing the people, likes smiling and likes existing here. The box says they call her the  _ mad lady,  _ because she is, but she really doesn’t think much of it. 

Then there is nothing and she remembers a moment so long ago — remembers a yell and what used to be a family. She thinks she is entering her mind again when she sees someone that looks so much like — 

_ “Katara?” _

He looks so similar and yet older, an adult. There is a girl next to him with a painted face who she doesn’t know. She frowns. This is . . . 

He stares at her, at her confused expression, and something in his eyes shatters. “It’s me, Katara. Sokka?”

That thought is firmly stuck in her mind, old Katara let out a bit. “Sokka?” her voice cracks.

He rushes at her and she is trapped in his arms — it feels so different, so good, so right, like a part of her is missing. “Oh, Katara,” he says into her hair before pulling away. “What . . . what happened to you? You’re . . . the Fire Lady?”

Her eyebrows twist and she nods. He waits for more but it doesn’t come, and then he looks even more heartbroken. The girl behind him walks up and whispers something in his ear, and then he repeats, “What happened to you?”

A tear leaves her eye and she doesn’t know what to say. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't really supposed to be a happy ending. I'm a little tired of seeing capture fics where they jump each other after a few days. Let me know what you guys think about this concept :) + let me know if you'd want me to expand on some scenes or if you're terrified enough


	2. space makes you kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third night Katara goes on the deck to meet Zuko. Darkish, heed tags, Zuko is an asshole.

He looks at her like she’s special. It’s interesting. Yesterday he held her hand again and sat her down and talked to her about how much he had hated his father. Today he is talking about his sister and the emotions in his eyes are conflicted. He says it out loud, too. He will always love her but he also despises her. It sounds like an angry version of a feeling which sinks into her ribs, but she puts it aside and stares listlessly.

The water is gone and does not obey her whims anymore but it will forever be a part of her. Her character is fluid like a special sort of ocean and with it she ebbs and flows. His words wash over her and encase her but they do not sink into her. He is trying to take her somewhere and she is not fighting. She deserves it. Doesn’t she?

His startling warm hands rest on her arms again, pulling her close into him. She doesn’t slip away, just sits there. She feels a little safe here. Zuko feels strong. He is well built and even in robes which almost overwhelm him she can  _ feel  _ him. She thinks she used to be strong but she knows she has been slowly wasting away. She doesn’t eat unless Iroh sits in front of her and almost forces her. She’s never hungry. Even the necklace around her throat has grown loose. He reaches out and attempts to touch it — she flinches back.

He sees that as a victory, a sign of her acknowledgment of his existence here, and his body vibrates. He diverts the conversation again here to ask about her. “Is this important to you?”

It is. She thinks of her mother, a death that she can’t quite recall. She nods and her hair, lank and long, brushes against him. He smiles wide.

“Why?”

That question is open-ended and she doesn’t quite want to answer it because to do so would be to speak out loud. She doesn’t like hearing herself, her voice high with disuse. She has not ever talked to him before. She stays silent — 

— until he makes a motion to take it away and she gasps. “No!”

“Ah,” his hand falls to his side before reaching back up to hers, tracing her side. “You  _ can  _ speak. Why is it important to you?” She doesn’t move. “I will take it away if you don’t tell me why it’s important to you.”

The way he repeats his words is condescending and some part of her smarts. But it is shoved back down and she exhales. She will not lose what keeps her grounded. “It was my mother’s.”

He shifts and she faces him for a minute before pitting her eyes downwards. She doesn’t want to look into his eyes, nor does she want to see the mangled side of his face. It brings up a terrible feeling that she can’t describe in her chest, something a little too close to  _ pity.  _ Pity is a feeling. She shouldn’t have it right now. So she focuses on his lips and sees them grow a little wider. 

“You can talk, can’t you? You have a beautiful voice,  _ Katara,”  _ he doesn’t sound rude and that makes it even worse. “Never be afraid to speak around me.”

She refuses to work with him and he lurches for the necklace again and she jumps back. “No! Please.”

The way he caresses his cheek, running over her skin, is so antithetical to the spark in his eyes. He looks so sinful. “I won’t,” he placates her, “I won’t take it away. But you have to speak to me.”

His words are so inflammatory even as his voice is kind, almost soothing. He isn’t treating her like a child but almost like porcelain, as if he’s afraid she’ll crack if he raises his voice. She dislikes the ultimatum but how is she supposed to fight back? She whispers. “Okay.”

He illuminated the lamps when he came up here, and the reflections in his eyes make her shudder. He looks like he just  _ won  _ something, looks like he’s found himself as he cradles her head in his hand and reaches down to settle them into lying positions on the ship’s deck. She feels used to the cold, used to warm furs and ice homes. Wherever they are right now the weather is warm, slightly humid; occasionally a brief wind flies across the deck, pulled to them by the waves, and she shakes. He pulls her closer, and she is a little bit thankful for his body heat. A firebender’s heat.

His eyes look straight into hers — she attempts to look away but he draws her chin back up. “You can’t waterbend.”

It’s a statement but he’s gazing at her like he’s expecting an answer. She whispers. “Yes.”

“But you used to be a waterbender. I met you.”

She’s met him before? Old Katara is saying something about an Avatar and a brother to her and she wants to listen but she’s so far away. She needs to keep up this conversation. “You did?”

It’s still a genuine question. She doesn’t remember his face. She fought a Fire Prince, she thinks. She doesn’t like the Fire Prince. Why?

She shakes her head a little, imperceptibly like there’s something lodged there. He pokes her on the nose and leans back with a smile — is that supposed to be nice? She can’t tell. “I remember — you were dressed in furs and —”

He’s in the middle of his reminiscing when once again she sees a figure behind him. This is becoming an all too common occurrence now. She likes Iroh, though. Iroh is nice and she truly thinks he wants the best for her. He looks rather stormy as he approaches them. Zuko turns when she glances up and a frown graces his features.

It’s nothing compared to the one across the other man’s face. They’re related, aren’t they? She thinks about what Iroh had said. Nephew. Zuko is his nephew? What else had he said?  _ Stay away. _

Zuko isn’t that terrible. She doesn’t need to stay away. He threatened to take her necklace but some part of her knows he wouldn’t have done it. 

_ “Nephew,”  _ he spits. “What are you doing with her? Let her go!”

Zuko moves up even as she stays down, placing his hand protectively over her hair. “I’m not doing anything,  _ uncle.” _

The old man pauses just feet in front of them, taking in her cloudy and yet perplexed expression. He looks into her eyes and frowns. “What did I tell you, Katara?”

Her lips twitch. “Stay . . . away?”

“Yes, yes,” he repeats, looking a little appeased. “Katara is my guest, Zuko.”

“I haven’t disrespected her —”

_ “No.  _ You haven’t yet.”

Silence rules the space between them and another breeze flits over her. He’s moved further away and she’s cold so she reaches out to his arm to feel the heat of his body. He’s just a person, nothing more. Another vessel. She ends up clutching to the heat and when she looks up again Iroh is giving her another broken look.

“She’s fine with me.”

_ Am I? _

“Zuko,” his voice turns more imploring, “you know she’s not all there. Don’t do this to her.”

Zuko turns around and glances at her, the little water tribe girl clutching his hand, who has lost interest in this exchange and is staring at the night sky. “I can take care of her.”

_ “You did this to her.” _

The words trigger something in her mind. It hurts. It hurts so badly. She wants to take it off. What did he do? What happened to her? She remembers fire. Burning. She closes her eyes and then she doesn’t  _ hear  _ anything straightforward. There is lots of noise, though, sounds she can’t quite comprehend. 

The din fades away after a few moments. The heat is gone but the deck is almost alight. There is fire everywhere. Fire —  _ oh. _

Zuko and Iroh are fighting. The former is suddenly holding swords as well and the latter is breathing fire. Iroh is bending. Iroh never bends in front of her, for whatever reason. But right now he is. He looks angry. They both look angry. This terrifying. She screams.

They stop.

The flames die down and then they both come towards her. Zuko reaches faster — he’s still faster than his uncle and he looks incredibly worried as he pulls her up. When he reaches up to wipe her face she realizes her cheeks are covered in tears. 

“No, no, don’t cry,” he moves her head into his chest. So warm. He’s so warm. She stares unblinkingly into the fabric of the robes, stuck somewhere, so lost. Footsteps stop hitting the deck when Iroh pulls up next to them. 

“Katara,” he says, and she can’t see his face but his tone is despondent. “I want to help you.”

Zuko clutches her tighter. “I have her. She has me.”

“It’s been  _ days  _ Zuko —”

“And what? She’s perfect, Uncle Iroh. I’ll be good to her.”

“You already know what you did to her. You’ve taken everything away from her.”

“I can fix this.”

“No,” Iroh says sadly, “you can’t. Neither can I. It’s too late.”

The chest next to her face heaves. “Then let me have this, uncle. I can take care of her.”

“She’s not a  _ pet,  _ Zuko.”

“I know, I know. She — mother — I can  _ try,  _ can’t I? And I like her.”

“How can you like her? She’s a shell of a person —”

She doesn’t like that. Both old Katara and new Katara don’t like that. She’s still a person, a whole one, no matter what it seems. She exists and she is important and she is not a shell of a person. She can still  _ feel  _ these things even if she can’t do anything about them. Her fists, caught up in his heat, pull back, and he notices. “She’s here, uncle. Under all of this she’s here. Let me fix my mistake.”

“There’s nothing to fix.”

“Let me repent like this. I’ll love her.”

“Love!” Iroh exclaims, a terrible small laugh leaving his lips. “What can you know about love? I tried so hard to make you understand, Zuko. You are just like your father. And you are going to have her be just like your mother.”

“No,” he’s shaking, she can feel it. “No. You don’t know what you’re saying. Father had to die, for all he did. You know how he banished mother. I won’t do that. She’ll be with me and I’ll give her everything. I’ll give her everything,” he repeats, like a promise. “You know. You know.”

The sea rocks against the bottom of the boat. Iroh sighs. “Katara is my regret, Zuko.”

“I —”

“No. I want you to understand this. People are not  _ toys,  _ Zuko, I don’t care what your father and Azula and the rest have placed in your head. You care so much about honor, you have to honor her. You have done  _ so  _ much wrong for your honor you should do one thing right.”

“Uncle, I —”

“You have nothing,” Iroh hisses. “You will have a throne when you return and you and your sister will attempt to rule the world but you have nothing. And you know this and you cannot fill the void with her because of your guilt. You don’t know her, Zuko.”

“Your talk sounds like treason.”

“Is defending someone hopeless treason, now? Is it? Toss me over, then. I gave you the rest of who I was. Lu Ten . . .” he pauses like he is shaking his head. “I’m ashamed of you, Zuko. I will always be.”

“I . . . I don’t care. I don’t need your approval.”

“Ah,” Iroh bites back. “If only you had learned that lesson when your father burned your face off.”

She hears a sharp intake of breath. The words around her are entering her ears but they’re not making it into the box. “Leave.”

“You will never have her.”

_ “Leave.” _

Another gust of wind comes towards her, and she once again seeks warmth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and here's your reminder that this is fucked up 🥰


	3. have a revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara meets Azula for the first time.

There are rules in the palace. Katara is not supposed to sleep with Zuko. She’d heard the housekeeper shout at him when he’d brought her into his rooms, telling him that she should stay in the harem like his father’s girls. She had never seen the woman again.

There is a tunnel in his room to the Fire Lady’s, and the room is empty. She knows Zuko has Azula but the girl is not the Lady to his Lord, simply the general of his armies. She’s heard plenty of tales and lamentations about his part-insane sister. He tells her that she is a flight risk and all but a rabid cur, a tool to carry out his will. “Ask her for enough blood and she doesn’t demand much else. She’s after cruelty, not power,” he mutters into her hair.

The staff talks about Azula too, whispers in corridors about a monster of a Princess who is just as bloodthirsty as her father was. Zuko might not have been Fire Lord if the girl had asked for the role. She had been content to let her brother take up a professional mantle and play politics from within a palace. _She’s crazy and yet so intelligent._

Katara has a maid named Lan who helps her with her dressing — she, herself, is usually not present enough to select outfits and jewelry which fit her. She stands and lets the girl flit over her, adjusting her dainty makeup and making sure the fabric she wears drapes correctly. Red. Always red. Today she stares listlessly into the mirror as she is adorned in a rather heavy gown, one which emphasizes the curves she is regrowing, covered in golden patterns. It’s fancier than the usual light pieces she dons for dinners with an assorted collection of nobles, quietly picking at her food by Zuko’s side. They take breakfast together and she takes lunch alone but they always have rather formal dinners. 

Her discomfort with the unfamiliar sensation is clear and she reaches out to tap her fingers against the fabric. She doesn’t speak very much to her maid but Lan is talkative and is usually able to understand what she’s saying with her small motions and bitten lips. “Lord Zuko’s advisor told me that there will be a larger dinner tonight. Princess Azula has arrived back at the palace, after calming down Ba Sing Se. It’s a bit of a small congratulatory party for her.” Lan’s words grow more bitter the further she speaks.

She has never met Azula before. She has only been in the palace itself for a few months. And she is a little terrified of the other girl. Zuko has talked to her about her violence. She lets her hands fall listlessly back to her side and rasps aloud. “Do you like . . . Princess Azula?”

The syllables almost hurt the roof of her mouth, but it’s more of an effort than she usually makes. Lan smiles in the mirror before starting up again. “I know you’re not one to talk, Lady Katara. Nobody at this palace is very fond of the Princess. She has always been rather cruel, even as a child. My mother used to be a cook and she told me stories about her and told me to stay away. She’s a very powerful bender and she is rather mean to the staff. She likes to . . . hurt people who offend her.”

The box screams _what have you gotten yourself into get out_ at those last whispered words and Katara cringes. Hurt. She hopes Azula will not hurt her, even if she deserves it. Would Zuko let her hurt her? She knows that Zuko is also a little scared of his sister. But Zuko keeps her safe, even as she can’t reach out and help him in any way.

She gets lost in thought and then Lan has finished her light makeup once more. She is exotic in the Fire Nation, dark-skinned and blue-eyed, and if her eyes were not downcast and her expression so minimal she would look especially gorgeous right now. But alas her posture is weak and she sits on the bed to wait for Zuko to return and accompany her to dinner, her visage unchanging as Lan leaves her with a cheery wave. Her eyes daze and she smooths over the bedsheets rhythmically, smoothing them out to crumple them up once again. She thinks about herself as a rumple in the fabric. It feels like hours before the door opens and Zuko once again walks in. 

He gives her a worn smile and moves to the mirror in the corner to adjust his topknot. He will not have to change his attire, he dresses formally every day, but his hair is starting to tangle. It takes him but a few moments before he sighs and finishes and sits down next to her on the bed, placing her hand — the one which had been mindlessly moving — into his and running his fingers over her knuckles.   
  


“You look beautiful,” he says after a moment, looking into her cloudy eyes and moving both their hands up so she is caressing her own face. “Katara . . . you are going to meet Azula today.”

She thinks about staying still but then thinks about _hurt_ and nods her head a little. He looks happy at her response. “Do not speak to her, just stay with me — and do not let her pull you away, alright? Stay by my side.”

A part of her thinks that the old Katara would have fought before she let some evil princess steal her away. This Katara responds by flexing her fingers a little around his larger ones and then moving to remove his hands from her face. He lets go as their hands hit the sheets once again, reaching out instead to kiss her lightly on the cheek. This is _different,_ the kissing, but it makes him happy. 

He tugs her up and they walk in silence, her hand in his elbow, through the Fire Lord’s wing and to the large hall where most banquets are held. The staff they see on the way all mold into the walls. She thinks it’s strange, how easily people become invisible. 

The hall itself is a blur. She stands next to Zuko and stares at the wall with a frown on her face, thinking about how hard it is to see people as he greets important nobles, shaking hands and introducing her as his _lady,_ whatever that means. She doesn’t remember the faces, or hold hands, or talk to them herself. She is just a decoration, here. The looks they send her, in turn, are filled with both disgust and pity. She does not care what they think of her. She does not think Azula is here in those moments.

The rest of the guests and Zuko eat Fire Nation delicacies, but her physicians are worried about her health and her size and so she drinks nutritional brew from a different bowl, barely choking down the food. There are so many sounds around her, Zuko’s hand placed comfortably on her thigh. She still thinks Azula is not here. The feelings which warp her mind at these dinners, the noises and the touches and the sights, do not feel much different. She feels like with Azula they would change a little.

Everyone else is eating a chocolate dessert course when she senses a small change in the way the room is — less noise and less movement. Her vision clears up and she focuses on the scene in front of her. Zuko’s hand leaves her and he stands up. His quiet advisor next to her looks nervous. There is a breeze. The door has opened.

“How great of you to join us, Princess Azula.”

Oh, there is a woman at the door. This must be Princess Azula. She can see a little of her resemblance to Zuko in the cut of her features, unmarred as they are by a scar. The woman does exude power, she thinks. Power and terror. Rooms are usually not this quiet but Azula has made the room silent. Zuko won’t let Azula hurt her. Azula won’t hurt her. She won’t? Right. She won’t.

“Sorry, Fire Lord _Zuzu,”_ the girl quips, and nobody laughs as she dances around to where Zuko is once again sitting. She is also warm but it isn’t a familiar heat, like Zuko’s. She’s frightening. Katara closes up a little bit inside of herself, trying to avoid being recognized by the monster in front of her, her eyes staring at her lap. The two siblings have a brief stare-off before Azula pats Zuko’s shoulder in a move that is definitely more awkward than anything else. “My ship was a little late and I just got _so much_ attention in the palanquin coming here.”

“No excuses needed, _sister,”_ he hisses. “Please, take your seat —”

“Oh, who’s this, Zuko? Sitting in the Fire Lady’s seat?”

Katara shivers like she can feel the sharp eyes looking at her, refusing to move her eyes up from where they are looking at the gold bracelets on her wrist. _No no no._

“This is Lady Katara, Azula. I will introduce you to her at a later date.”

“I see,” she feels a snarl. “An interesting development, _brother.”_

She hears a little scuffle take place but no more words are said and the heat disappears. After a minute the din once again pours into her ears and she looks up. A second too soon, old Katara berates her, when she sees Azula’s madly dainty features poised in her direction. She shakes and Zuko, almost by instinct, reaches over and places his hand on her elbow, deep into a conversation about tariffs with some governor. 

She hates these dinners but she dreads when this one will end. Azula looks like she wants to consume her and she is terrified. 

The time comes all too soon — slowly the guests start to disperse and leave. She stays seated and nurses a cup of tea as Zuko walks around, keeping her in his sight, smiling at dignitaries and promising meetings to politicians. When she finishes draining the cup Azula has disappeared and Zuko is next to her, taking her hand and leading her up and out the door. She holds his hand tighter than she normally does. Suddenly the dark sky scares her. They are in the courtyard when a figure jumps out in front of them.

“Ah, Zuko.”

“Azula,” he nods with a sigh. “I suppose you can’t wait to catch up tomorrow?”

The Fire Princess is dressed in finery, red slashed across her lips, hands twisting. “It’s been _so_ long since we’ve talked, brother. I’m sure our kitchen wouldn’t mind brewing up some tea, for now?”

Katara pauses and Zuko’s fingers flex around hers. “Alright,” he acquiesces, and her heart jumps out of her chest. _Hurt hurt hurt . . ._

He grasps her firmly and leads them to the room where she usually takes her evening tea, ordering a servant to bring them the beverage on the way. There are cushions artfully placed across the floor and Azula lights the lamps with a blaze of blue before stretching out across from the two of them. Zuko pulls her into his lap before settling down.

“Who _is_ this, Zuko? I didn’t know that you were _courting_ someone. And someone not even of the Fire Nation, at that? What are you, Water Tribe?”

Azula is _talking to her._ She doesn’t speak. She thinks she is _water tribe,_ she knows those words, but . . .

“Yes, she is,” Zuko replies tightly.

“Oh, alright, whatever. Exotic is what works. Does Mai know about this?”

_Mai?_ She frowns. Who is _Mai?_ Zuko tenses around her, his legs encasing her own. “I was a child when I was with Mai, Azula. I don’t owe her anything.”

She doesn’t really care about _Mai._ Does she?

Azula raises a painted eyebrow. “I suppose. What’s with her, anyway? Can she talk?”

Katara blanches when the other girl reaches out over the cushions and taps her on the arm after there is a second of silence, almost teasingly. “Hello?”

Zuko freezes too.

“What’s her problem, Zuzu? Is she mute? She looks rather doll-like, as it is. Dressed up in fancy clothes and with such a blank look. I swear, I barely saw her _move_ all night.”

“She’s fine,” Zuko shoots back.

“Really? She looks rather broken to me, brother. I always thought you were into the stubborn types,” she taps Katara’s arm again and the former waterbender once again flinches. Azula is staring right into her unfocused eyes. “So you can _move,_ peasant.”

“You will not call her a peasant.”

“Oh, well, Lady Katara, blah blah blah, fancy titles,” Azula pulls back. “Seriously Zuko, does the girl talk? Or do anything, whatsoever? Did you bring home a _pet?”_

“Azula —”

“She must do _something._ This seems rather boring. Have you _tried_ to incite her at all? Perhaps tell her about the raids on the Water Tribes, maybe how we’ve already taken over the North — the South barely exists, as it is. The Avatar made all of this so _easy._ We’ve taken over your people,” she repeats, a gleeful look on her face as she stares Katara down, “and you’re just _here —”_

“Azula!”

Azula’s words don’t mean that much to her. Water Tribes. North. South. These words have meaning to her but she can’t quite remember from where. She tries to think about it more but then she hits a wall and it hurts a _lot._ It makes her want to put her hands over her ears and crawl up once again into Zuko’s warmth. But the box tells her not to do that, and she listens and just stares at the Princess, eyes wide open and mouth closed. _Hurt._

“You will _not_ say those things to Katara — she is in a precarious state —”

“Oh, I see, then,” Azula’s lip twitches. “She’s _insane,_ isn’t she? Really, your time with Iroh rubbed you wrong, Zuzu. You’re really with _this?_ The girl isn’t going to be any fun at all. She’s so boring and she doesn’t do anything. What were you thinking?”

Their tea still hasn’t arrived, not that she wants it anyway. Her legs shake against Zuko and he bites back at his sister. “You should leave, Azula. Katara isn’t comfortable with you here.”

Katara _isn’t_ comfortable. There is a sort of madness she can recognize now and she can see it in Azula’s eyes. _Crazy and so intelligent._

The princess gasps. “How can you _tell?”_

The two siblings trade stares — one serious and one dancing on a thin line — before Zuko sighs and helps bring her to her feet. Her fancy gown is a little crumpled. Like that bedsheet, in their room. Katara wants to go back to bed.

Before they leave she sees Azula’s eyes once again and shudders.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought of this -- I do think that Azula is the kind of person who likes to play games with people, and she isn't going to be able to do that with Katara.
> 
> As always, let me know what you want to see next. These are not going to be chronological but what happened with Sokka and Suki will be addressed. Thanks for reading!


	4. leaving rust behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four years after she's captured, Katara wanders the market.

She really likes going to the market.

It’s nice to be able to see people living the life old Katara aspired to have — idling by at stands, families walking with each other. The guards which follow her are plentiful but they stay in the crowd and she can barely sense them there. Today she’s walking with Lan and another one of her servants — really ladies — Hua. They are both her age and they giggle and chat as the three of them wander through the stalls, acting as if she is a part of their conversation even as she stays silent.

Katara is a sight to behold here, and she does understand that. Even if her retinue of costumed accomplices wasn’t a damning enough sign of her affiliation, her darker complexion and bright blue eyes make her stand out from the rest of the citizens of the Fire Nation. She wears no indication of her association with the Fire Lord but word spreads fast in a palace full of servants. Few others would fit her description. So the people know that she is special here. And they give her looks deserving of her unknown status. 

The stand she is walking by is selling fish. The owner of it looks up at her when she stops to stare at the merchandise and nearly screeches before giving her a bow and a wane smile. The woman is old and wrinkles cover her face but there is a special kind of spark in her eyes — the kind Katara, not even twenty, doesn’t have. She looks at the wares with mild interest; food is not her concern here. But the stand is new and she hasn’t seen in before, so she takes in the small details she has time for. The fish smell almost like a memory, salty like the ocean, and the wood it is on looks built brand new. 

The stand’s owner looks up to barely meet her eyes when she turns them up. She won’t talk, but she gives the woman a smile, the corners of her mouth lifting. “My Lady,” she gasps in return.

Katara doesn’t have anything to say. She never really does. But she places her powerless hand across the woman’s cheek, laying over the wrinkles which lie there. She’s not sure why but the face reminds her of a similar figure in her past.  _ A woman thrown into her hands — a prince holding her — sleeping bags and a canoe — stories about the spirit world —  _ her head shakes and she lets the thoughts escape. She’s sure it’s strange, in the box, to have someone lay their hands on you, but the woman doesn’t react until Katara moves away, giving her a smile in return. Lan reaches out for Katara’s fingers and she goes along with the movements, letting Hua take her other side and lead her away. The girls give her two slightly worried looks before ensuring that her back is turned from the fish merchant. 

“Do you know her, Lady Katara?” Hua asks after a second, her voice cracking a little as the sun shines above at them. Hua doesn’t know anything about her, other than the fact that she’s from the Water Tribe. Lan doesn’t really either but she gives the other girl a reproachful look.

“We do not need to ask Lady Katara —”

Katara gives the servant another one of her light smiles before lightly moving her hand away to rest it on her shoulder. This isn’t proper behavior either, some part of her thinks, holding hands with her ladies. She shrugs off the feeling and gives both girls a shake of her head, leading them further through the streets, eyes following the pedestrians once again. They fall silent and let her peruse in peace.

To the side is a cabbage merchant who sits alone with a smile on his face as he distributes his wares to the people lined up in front of him. She’s observed this man for many years; she knows that he must, for whatever reason, have good produce, because there are always those who want his wares standing in the heat. He is shaded over in this weather that she has grown accustomed too, and when he sees her he gives her a small nod. She has walked this path so many times, weekly for ages and ages, and she returns it back.

There is a small alley across from her as well, and children run across from it, playing with each other with sticks and shouts. Every week the children here change but their activities stay the same. They look so naughty, so lighthearted, and they swing and chase each other without a care in the world. This scene also brings back some of the old Katara, except in her mind she thinks  _ snow,  _ and  _ ice,  _ and  _ cold.  _ She thinks that she must have been a child once and played like this. Once again, new Katara wishes a little that she could remember those times and the box which she has been edging open slides shut. The pain associated with the feeling slams through her mind but she’s grown to resist it and simply grinds her teeth together, looking away from the kids and to her front, her destination.

It is a tea shop. Lan and Hua go to her front and back as they slide through the small door and into the shop within. It’s a bit strange, to serve tea at the edge of the market, but the building is more than it seems. Iroh waits for her as she exits the world outside, running forth and encasing her into his arms. “Katara!”

Iroh comes and sees her at the palace often enough, but she knows that even if Zuko is alright with his presence Azula is bloodthirsty as ever. She tries to stop here and drink his tea as often as possible. The first time she’d come her guards had complained to Zuko and he’d had a reprimand on his tongue before she’d turned to him and given him a pleading look. He’s always weak when she shows emotion; he had let it pass. And at night he tells her that he doesn’t hate his uncle.

“Iroh,” she breathes out, quietly but clearly, and he leans back and gives her a bright smile before turning to Lan and Hua and clapping his hands. 

“I’ll get you three seats. My special brew, Katara?” he winks at her, and she loosely nods and lets Lan guide her to one of the tables set up in the corner. The tea at the palace is nothing compared to Iroh’s. She traces the tablecloth’s pattern as he takes the other girl’s orders. They are technically below her but they are treated more as her companions than anything else, and are of low noble birth as it is. She’s not quite sure if they are her friends, but they are all she thinks she might have, if that.

Normally she is content to sit in silence. She has gone through these repeated motions for weeks on end, a bird alright with sitting in a large cage. But Lan and Hua seem more fidgety than usual; she can see their bouncing knees moving the table. Her eyes are counting the swivels on the creamy pattern when it shifts and she sighs and looks up at Hua, her eyebrows raised.

“Lady Katara,” she bounces, “the entire palace is buzzing — the Fire Lord’s birthday is —”

_ “Hua!”  _ Lan claps her hand over the other girl’s mouth. “Lady Katara doesn’t need to hear of rumors, Fire Lord Zuko and her —”

Katara taps the table loudly and looks inquisitively into Hua’s eyes and gestures for her to continue. Lan moves back.

“He’ll be twenty,” she whispers as if she’s talking about treason and not a party. “There’s talk that he would join the party with your wedding.”

_ Wedding?  _ She frowns and her eyebrows furrow. Wedding — wed Zuko? A wedding is . . . a way for two people to pledge themselves to each other, she thinks, and suddenly her hands come up to clutch her necklace. Her  _ mother.  _ An engagement.  _ Oh —  _

Lan catches the movement and sighs at Hua. “They’re not engaged, Hua. You’re out of line.”

The other girl looks surprised that Katara seems caught unawares. “Aren’t they? I thought that necklace —”

“It’s not from him,” she whispers, and their backs both straighten at her words. 

“Oh,” Hua says, after a second of silence. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Lady Katara. The way that the Fire Lord looks at you — I did think that he planned to marry you, everyone does, he seems so in love . . .”

Hua’s words send her spiraling for a second and her hand dips again to the table before clutching the side of her face.  _ Wedding, marriage,  _ those words are for  _ love,  _ and she does not think that she loves Zuko. Not in the way he tells her he loves her, late at night with his hands in her hair and his lips to her shoulder. Some part of the box says  _ what did you expect you have been here for so long this was going to happen you know you have destroyed yourself. _

“Hua,” Lan whispers urgently, again, her hand reaching over to press against Katara’s shoulder, but she moves away.  _ How old are you where are you what is this do you want to rule the Fire Nation what are you doing? _

She almost has control of herself when the other girl lets out her next shocking words. She thinks they are meant just for Lan, not her, but she hears them nonetheless. “I didn’t know, this is strange, Lan, what  _ is she?” _

That’s not a question she has had an answer to for a long time, some part of her bitterly thinks, getting up from the table and pushing her chair over. It crashes and it sounds like something breaks. “You know she’s delicate!” is all she hears before she claps her hands over her ears and moves away from them. Her eyes are closed and she  _ knows  _ that she is running into something when someone places a hand on her shoulder. The hand is warm and heavy and she expects Iroh before she takes him in.

The old man has a teapot in his hand that he places on the surface next to her before reaching out and slowly guiding her away. She knows that she’s not too far from the girls and she keeps her ears closed until he has lead her around the winding array of tables and out into his kitchen. The room smells of jasmine and spice, and as he tightens the curtains which serve as the door she shakes and ends up on the floor. 

She hasn’t had a fit like this in a long time — her two selves haven’t warred with each other in such a  _ long time.  _ But the words keep running through her mind . . .  _ wedding, love, strange . . . _

“Iroh,” she gasps and looks up to see him standing in front of her, a kind look in his eyes, “how long?”

“How long have you been here?” he follows up after another moment of her quiet breathing and dry tears. She nods.

“I think . . . four years now, Katara. Perhaps five.”

_ Four years.  _ She hasn’t thought in numbers in so long. She thinks back and tries to remember when those years started. Meeting Iroh for the first time, Zuko bending on the deck, his arms around her, feeling some kind of peace. The palace, Lan, Azula’s cruel stares which moved to boredom and then confusion, the turtleducks in the pond, the way Zuko’s eyes light up when he looks at her. Old Katara screams but it seems so far away.  _ She is so old.  _ She doesn’t think she’s the old Katara, anymore. What comes next?

_ Fire Lord . . . marriage, engagement . . . love . . . _

_ What do you want? _

Tears end up streaking down her cheeks.  _ Get out of the box Katara get out of the box what kind of future are you creating for yourself this is not it you do not love him. _

She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t love this. Right? Marriage is about love. She has been here for four years. She knows the cabbage-man, she knows the children, she knows his secretive smiles and the way he likes to kiss her forehead.  _ You have been here for so long what are you doing you need to leave this is not okay why are you with him he’s hurting you —  _

Except he’s not.

She screams into her hands, a sound which she knows will carry, and Iroh’s old bones lean down and gather her up in his arms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to clarify that these oneshots will be mostly nonlinear but in this verse. I didn't really expect to expand this so the original chapter might not really bring across just how multidimensional Katara and Zuko are.


	5. make yourself right at home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Around when Katara meets Azula for the first time, during her first months in the palace, she and Zuko have a conversation and a kiss. Strange consent and unreliable narrator.

Zuko wants to escape his sycophants.

His grandfather and father were terrible people but he has respect, newfound, for them. He thinks about how quick his father was to turn his bending onto his mother; he wonders how much self-control the man must have had in order to not constantly kill off the Fire Nation’s nobles. Their incessant chattering and flattery grate on his nerves but he handles it. Azula has a much better deal than him, he realizes in retrospect. She isn’t beholden to the whims of advisors at court and makes decisions about her conquered territories without anyone in her way. 

_ A prodigy.  _ He will never be the kind of terrible his sister is, he thinks. When he was younger he dreaded that fact, felt like he was less for not having blue fire and a stone heart. Now he thinks that she must have a rather empty existence. 

“Fire Lord Zuko, this is unfair for those in the —”

“We have resolved this matter,” he spits out at General Shan, and the other man recoils back. He sighs and sits up in the silence which follows, repeating the sentiment to the hall at large. “I will be retiring now.”

Short, succinct,  _ powerful,  _ he has power — he was the banished prince for so long, and now he is virtually the most feared man in the world. Two parts of him war at that but he shoves them aside and leaves the hall to walk up to his room, eschewing formal leave and ignoring the guards which trail him. It’s been a hard day, full of meetings and budgeting issues and not one but  _ two  _ assassination attempts. They were thwarted, as they always are, but they still leave his heart racing and usually end with a few of his guards out of service, which ends up in more paperwork. In his mind’s eye he sees his desk, piled with reports, and he can’t show much weakness while he’s still in public but he wants to put his head in his hands and sigh.

Uncle Iroh — Former General Iroh — would have some sort of strange proverb to apply to this situation, but the man has practically disowned him. He throws that thought out of his head, not something he wants to dwell on, before gently sliding his door open and closing it behind him, nodding at the guard which stands outside in the hall. He would have slammed the door but Katara doesn’t like loud noises.

He smiles at her, now, sitting up on his bed’s crimson sheets, idling combing away at her beautiful hair. She doesn’t look up when he walks in and heads to the dresser in the corner. Nothing at all, in fact, changes about her motions; her head is down and her hands are hypnotizingly moving the brush. He turns away and reaches up to remove the topknot from his hair and let his hairpiece down, and then shoots her another glance before he moves to the adjacent dressing room and changes out of his heavy robes as quickly as possible. Clothed in lighter clothes, made of silk — definitely more proper for the Fire Nation’s tropical climate — he goes back and sees her lying down on the sheets.

The brush is on the nightside table and now she’s faced towards the center of the bed — on the left side, that’s her side — and has a bit of her hair curled around her fingers. She’s playing with it, and a light smile dances across her face whenever it springs away. It’s a warm night, and the covers are unneeded, so he lays on top of them when he reaches the bed, an arm’s length in front of her.

He stops a minute just to take her in. Her hair is lusher than it once was, regaining volume and shine with her new nutrition plan and her nightly ritual. Her skin is tan and something he hasn’t really ever seen before, smooth, and red sits easily on her cheeks without makeup. The delicate strength of her jaw, the pout of her lips . . . 

He wants to reach out and just kiss her, there, on the lip that she’s now biting. He won’t, he keeps telling himself that he won’t. Iroh’s words had stayed with him, a story about honor. He won’t kiss her first. He’s held her and he encases her in his arms and presses his lips to her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, but he won’t touch her lips. She has to come to him first. 

His honor, however, doesn’t stop him from reaching out and tracing his calloused fingers over her mouth. She lets go of the hair she’s been playing with and her mouth opens, her smile stuck in some sort of in-between. And then her eyes, finally, look up at him. His lungs let out a deep breath and he can’t help but relax a little into the sheets as he sees her lashes flutter. Those eyes, those are a strange type of beautiful; cloudy and rainy and bright and yet a little dull. The thought makes him pull back and cradle her cheek instead. Besides her wide-open look she hasn’t moved at all. 

“Hey, my love,” he says in that calm tone he saves just for her, the one the ministers and advisors and servants don’t hear. “Did you have a good day, after lunch?”

As usual, it takes her a few seconds to understand the question. She slowly shakes her head and he frowns, his grip growing tighter, though still fragile, on her face. The tightening of her features, the small flinch, it feels different.

“No?” he breathes out. “What happened? Was it one of the servants?”

Another shake of the head. “Katara,” he says, carefully, “I can only make it better if you tell me what happened.” It’s a lie. 

He wishes she would speak so, so much. Her voice is so beautiful and he thinks that perhaps he had scared her that one night, with her mother’s necklace. He didn’t mean to. He wants to make her better. He can’t do that if she won’t talk to him. 

Her voice catches but he is able to hear a single word. “Market . . .”

“Oh, you went to the market, today, didn’t you?” he leans in further to her until they’re barely apart, his hand reaching out to loosely lay across her waist. “Did something happen there?”

_ “Yes.” _

“Was someone . . . did something . . .” 

He sends out more guards with her than she thinks. He, himself, deals with so many assassination attempts a day; she is well-known as his largest weakness, even if the populace might not understand why. He wouldn’t let her leave at all but he can’t deny her much, and going to the market makes her happy. He just wants her to be happy. That’s love, not the strange way his father modeled it. 

He feels something reach down and move his hand, and he realizes that she’s placed her fingers into his, sliding their palms together, her cool body temperature to his, fiery hot and rapidly rising. “Did someone say something to you?”

She doesn’t answer him but just holds his hand tighter, and he sighs, trying to exhale his anger from himself. “What was it, Katara?”

Silence. He repeats. “What did they say, Katara?”

“Not say.”

Some sort of progress, he thinks, before getting caught up in his emotions again. “Someone  _ did  _ something? Did someone try to touch you —”

Before he can finish his angry statement she’s buried her face into his chest. He lets his now-free hand settle on her hair, feeling her heartbeat against his chest. This is a strange kind of intimacy but they work so well like this. Her fingers have a death grip over his, and they stay like this for a few minutes until he loosens his jaw. “Do you know who?”

She shakes her head against him and he lets out a small groan, clutching her even tighter to subvert the fire which is coursing through his veins. He needs self-control. “I’m going to talk to your guards, and that lady, and this is never, ever going to happen again, okay? You’re safe here.”  _ He’ll kill whoever dares to try such a thing. _

This time she nods up against him, just once, and then leans back. He’s conscious, now, of the fact that their legs are twined together and that they’re so close. Her lips are right in front of him. He won’t kiss them, he won’t. He has some honor left. 

“Have you tried bending, again?” he whispers into the shell of her ear, and she nods her head and he frowns. “I’ll talk to the physician about that, too. I don’t know why you can’t, now.”

The smile he receives in return is wan, but he takes it anyway, giving up part of his internal battle and kissing her hairline. When he leans back that little blush is sharper on her cheeks. 

“Tell me something, Katara, tell me anything. I just want to hear you.”

She looks down at their conjoined hands and he’s about lost hope when her soft voice speaks up again. “I miss the sea.”

It’s surprising, how four words can jump-start his insides. “That’s — of course, you would. I’ll take you, tomorrow. We’ll take one of the ships and go on a little day-trip near the water. I’ll have to reschedule a few meetings but it’ll be fine, and then you can go — you can go to the sea.”

He thinks about the paperwork, the assassins, his responsibilities, but then when he looks back at her her eyes are shining and her lips are turned up. It looks a little like a thank you — it doesn’t matter, really, what it looks like, because it just lights up his insides. This time he pecks her on the cheek and then looks back and stares right at her, hoping she can see the spark she ignites inside of him. “I love you, Katara.”

She doesn’t say anything back. She never does, when he says anything like that. He doesn’t know how he feels about that — should she love him? Can she? But she snuggles up onto his other arm, lying across her pillow, and it feels warm and nice and like trust.

He feels like jumping back, then, like Azula just zapped him with her lightning.  _ Trust?  _ Does she trust him? He can’t ask her a question like that. He doesn’t even know if he should. Some part of him thinks he’s a terrible person. He remembers, a little, how she looked before, her eyes defiant and staring at him, and thinks that  _ he  _ took that away from her. He’s a monster. He’s probably indirectly killed everyone she has ever cared about. She could not trust him and the only reason she might is due to his terrible deed.

Does he regret what happened to her? That is yet another war in his head. One part of him screams honor, screams Iroh, and that part tells him he cannot fix something this broken. The other part screams  _ Ozai  _ and reminds him that he can use every situation to his advantage.

Should he listen to his father? His father, who burned his face off, who hated him, who took away everything he ever slightly loved? His father, who would rule the world if not for his treacherous children?

But then again, is he is father? He doesn’t remember Ursa very well, now. Memories of her sometimes drift in and out of his head. Is she dead? Banished? He doesn’t know, and he likely never will. Even if she were alive she doesn’t have much to come back to. Or does she? He remembers a different, more destructive kind of love, one made out of bruises and other women and constantly trying to jigsaw hearts back together.

That’s not how he feels with Katara, how he  _ wants  _ to feel. He would never hit her, never have anyone else, never break her heart. All he would like is for her to put herself a little back together. Or does he? Some part of him thinks that if she had herself back she would leave. What does he have to offer her, anyway? A kingdom he can barely imagine, a face which screams danger, a love he doesn’t even understand. She would be better off without him. But then he wouldn’t get to take care of her. 

His eyebrows scrunch together and he shirks at the cool touch on his forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles there. Her face looks a little carefree right now, and as he flexes his arms a bit he realizes that he’s been caught in thought for quite a while. It’s easy to get lost in yourself when your partner is silent. 

He makes a move to open his mouth but it dies when he notices that she’s staring intently at the wrinkles on his forehead, smoothing her palms over them, pressing her hands down like she wants them to disappear. He wants to laugh, a little, at what a strange world this is. He does let out a bit of a chuckle as he slides her face off of his arm to remove her palm from his head and press it down. Her face looks worried as she pulls back.

“Sorry about that,” he says ruefully. “Sometimes I get caught up inside my head.”

Something changes in that very moment, like electricity crackling through the air. Her eyes lose a little bit of their dull shine, looking so alive as they look into his, like she’s almost a whole different person. Her mouth shakes as she shakes her head and stares at him like she knows him so well.

_ Of course,  _ he thinks, after a moment.  _ Caught up in my head.  _ “You’re a little stuck inside of there, aren’t you?”

Zuko’s not ready for the way she reaches over, with all of the force of her body, and nearly jumps on top of him. She’s light, as it is, so it’s not very uncomfortable to have her leaning into him at all. On the contrary he can feel her chest pressing into his, and he clenches his teeth. 

Katara is fully nestled into him with her face pressed into his neck. He can feel her eyelashes flutter against him, can feel the tears dripping out of her eyes. “Do you understand?

It’s a large sentence, more than what she usually says, and he tries to get closer to her even if he doesn’t think that’s truly possible, playing it back and forth in his head again.  _ Do you understand? _

He doesn’t understand, he thinks, but he knows. “I’m so, so sorry, Katara. I’m right here.”

Father, mother, uncle, Azula, Mai, everyone . . . it all fades away as he does nothing but feel the two of  _ them  _ in this moment. He can feel his mistake, can feel everything he’s done wrong, and he makes a vow to himself right then. “I’m going to protect you, and keep you safe, and I just need you to try inside of there, okay? I love you, I love you so much.”

Katara is distant right now. Her mind is somewhere far away, having a battle with itself, not knowing what’s occurring. She doesn’t love him, he knows, and as her sobs clear up he knows that she probably didn’t even hear what he said, that she might not think that he knows what’s wrong at all. It doesn’t matter. He will keep it anyway. Honor, he reminds himself, is sometimes that simple. Honor was taking back his birthright, and honor is making sure she’s alright — as alright as she can be.

When the shaking subsides fully she pulls back off of him and the cloudy look returns. He frowns but reaches out to smooth over the tear tracks which crystallize her features. He’s so focused on the small valleys of her skin that he doesn’t notice that she’s looking up at him until she lurches towards him. 

“What . . .” is all that barely escapes his mouth before her lips are pressed to his.

He doesn’t know who he’s kissing right now, doesn’t know if this is the girl with the clear eyes and the furs or the one which brushes her hair with finality, and he knows that this isn’t  _ honorable  _ to do, but he thinks about  _ love  _ and thinks he maybe deserves this one thing for himself. She doesn’t process much, she doesn’t love him, she’s so  _ lost,  _ but . . . she’s his, even more at this moment. 

His list of sins is spread miles wide. He watched as the Avatar was strangled, he sent his troops off to war, and he has so much blood on his hands. The blood of soldiers and civilians, the attack on the Earth Kingdom, his father’s old cabinet who he’d massacred one by one. He doesn’t like to think about that part of him, especially in moments like this. He separates the Zuko with the sycophants from the one which holds a water tribe girl in his arms like salvation.

Her lips are soft and warm and they make him a new person. He’s lost in it, exploding for a minute, and then utterly frightened when she pulls back, startled as she traces the edges of his scar with a sort of dreamy smile. It doesn’t feel like acceptance, not at all, but it feels like an acknowledgment. 

“I’m a terrible person,” he wants to say, but he won’t.

“You deserve much better,” he wants to say, but he won’t.

“Sleep well, Katara,” is all he says before he lends her his arm once again and sees her eyes close. Then he reaches out and pulls her hair between his fingers, counting out the strands, thinking about a life he could have had as he lets the numbers lull him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, unreliable narrator! Zuko really doesn't realize that he's a terrible person. Murder? Pssht. Nbd.
> 
> In terms of intimacy, we'll be getting to other times too. But in order to move this in a slightly different direction than the original oneshot (the first chapter) I wanted Zuko to have a bit more honor. 
> 
> How this all happened to Katara coming up next. Thank you for reading and for your support! Also, don't know if I've noted this yet, but I don't have a beta, so mistakes are mine.


	6. i can't love you better than she can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Katara splits herself at first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sad, okay? Dissociative identity, warning for references to suicide, just general darkness. Like, it's dark. She loses her mind. Please don't read this if you feel like anything close to that could trigger you.

**before:**

She’d fallen off Appa.

She doesn’t remember that day very well. She’d tried to create water whips and they hadn’t done much to her opponents but then she’d used ice and she and Sokka and Aang had crawled onto Appa and then she’d — she’d fallen off.

She thinks more happened after that, remembers seeing a scarred face and a kind one, but then she’d been shoved into a metal room with a small hole in the door and that had been it. If she’d known, then, that it would have been so long before she once again saw the light, saw another person, saw the sea, she would have maybe glanced around in reverence of existence instead of attempting to catalog a way out of there.

**day one:**

They haven’t given her water yet; they’d probably realized that she was a waterbender, figured out that she might use it to try to escape. It’s only been a day. She’s not thirsty yet.

The room is metal. There is a small bucket for waste in the corner, barely large enough to fit through the hole in the door, and a small mattress and blanket on the ground. There is no light. She can barely make out the waste bucket. 

That first day she tries to fit herself in the hole, but it’s much too small for her already thin frame. She pounds every section of the wall, trying to see if any part of it has any give. She tries to break off the metal so it can be a weapon and it stays strong. For a second she’d thought that she might suffocate, here in this darkness, but then she’d thought about the hole and the door. It’s locked from the outside and she can’t figure out the mechanism it uses from this angle. 

Her clothing is still together but it’s unusable, and the room is cold so she loathes to take her warm furs off. She fingers her necklace and entertains, for a second, the thought of breaking her mother’s pendant and using  _ that  _ as a weapon — the thought disappears as soon as it enters her mind. She will die before she disrespects her mother.

They don’t feed her. They want her weak, she thinks. Fine. She’s a girl of the south, and a few days of starvation will not kill her. She will get out of here, out of the cold metal prison, and she will defeat the Fire Nation and help Aang save the world. She will. She will.

She slides under the thin blanket when her mind grows weary of thinking of escape methods, and when she closes her eyes they have a spark of defiance.

**day four:**

The third day they give her food but it isn’t until the fourth that they give her water. She needs nourishment — she doesn’t have the energy to waterbend, anyways, so she drinks it up in gulps. She uses the waste bucket and wants to cry at the stench. It’s collected the next day, gestured to by the hand which slides her a metal bowl of fish and noodles.

She has to use her hands to eat because prisoners don’t get utensils. At first she thinks about using the bowl, breaking it, but it doesn’t bend no matter how hard she throws it. She stares at the wall again. Even if she were to find a sharp edge it would only dull in a room of metal. This is a prison made for earthbenders, she realizes, the real target of the Fire Nation’s warships, the kind she is in right now. Perhaps if she were a firebender she could melt the metal, though she finds that doubtful as well. This is a terrible prison.

She’s learned that the walls get cold at night, that the chills creep up her spine and settle themselves into her body, even wrapped around her furs and blanket. The room doesn’t insulate against the freezing temperature at all. She wants to leave the south, even if she doesn’t want to leave her home. She wants them to travel somewhere where she doesn’t feel like her appendages are going to fall off. She counts each chill as another night. Four nights. Four nights.

What will they do with her? Hold her hostage for the Avatar, of course. But Aang has a greater task to do — he shouldn’t come back for her. She can survive this. He shouldn’t risk his life and get captured by the Fire Prince for her. This isn’t that bad. She has food and nobody is hitting her, or taking her clothes off, or just violating her. Overall, in terms of prison, this is not so terrible.

She misses Sokka and Aang, misses her father with that dull ache that always exists in her chest. The chill passes and she doesn’t think about them.

**day seven:**

She’s given two meals a day and then the cold arrives, although it is improving a little bit. She’s exhausted every thought in her head. 

She’s replayed Kanna’s stories, tales about waterbenders and the North Pole and a world outside of the village, of evil firebenders and of peace.

She’s replayed her mother’s touch, clutching her necklace and remembering meals around fires in an insulated home, the snow falling white, the first time she’d bent water out of a cup.

She’s replayed the moment she and Sokka ran into the boy in the iceberg, the boy who had arrows tattooed over him, the one who is the reason she is here. She will stay strong. She will.

There are the little children in what’s left of the tribe, the way her father looked back at her, her brother’s smothering and yet caring grasp. She has so much to live for, so many good memories to look back at, more than the tainted ones. She refuses to think about black storms and flames. She’s so cold. So cold.

**day eleven:**

Now she looks at the walls and sees her enemies. She thinks about the fateful moments which led her here, the cruel prince with the strange hair destroying their wall of snow and ice, grabbing Kanna, running his eyes over her without a single thought. Like she was nothing to him. She is nothing to him.

Some part of her grins at the fact that now she is; no longer the clothes-washer and teacher and caretaker of the Southern Water Tribe, now she is important in this war. She has meaning. That’s why they’re keeping her down here.

She thinks about the ice she’d created, thinks about the fact that this ship is probably attempting to track Sokka and Aang right now. They’re going north, it’s getting warmer. They must still be going to the Northern Water Tribe. Good. Good. When she leaves, when they rescue her, when she comes out, she’ll go too. 

And then she will destroy the Fire Nation. The Fire Nation destroyed her mother, they took away her father, they separated her and Sokka. She hates them and she will destroy them, once she gets out of here. She will. She will.

  
  


**day seventeen:**

She doesn’t know what day it is anymore. She just doesn’t. She’d remembered yesterday but now that thought is gone. Twelve? Eighteen? Six? She doesn’t know. She tries to use her long nails to scratch the walls. She can’t tell time.

She decides, then and there, that she does need to be rescued. Sokka and Aang. They’ll rescue her, right? They will. They will come for her. Sokka loves her and Aang liked her too. They’ll come and save her. They need to come. She’s not a damsel in distress, she’s just not supposed to be in this situation. Sokka isn’t Hakoda. He held her when she slept after her mother died and he eats too much and he loves her and he’ll save her.

Food comes again. Fish and vegetables. It’s relatively nutritious but there’s no energy in her arms. There is water in the cup. She can bend it. It doesn’t move. It just stays there, taunting her. She throws it on the walls and it doesn’t absorb and then her mattress is wet. 

When they come back for her she’s going to hug Sokka first, she thinks, as she stares at a drop of water on the floor. She doesn’t even know Aang that well. She’ll go find Kanna. She’ll go find her dad.

She’ll eat sea prunes and go penguin sledding and she’ll sew again.

**day twenty-four:**

It’s humid. The air which enters the room is wet. She tries to bend it. It’s water, isn’t it? It’s water.

_ I want to leave here and I want to go home. I don’t care about the war. This is my war and my mother’s war but I do not want this. I want to go home and then learn how to bend and live a life in solitude. _

_ I want to spend the next two years with my family. I want to court a nice boy who’ll build me a nice house made out of ice and we’ll raise nice children and they’ll be safe. And they won’t be benders. And this won’t happen to them. _

_ Mother was never afraid. Mother was never afraid. She said to go find dad and that she would be okay. His eyes were gold and he was wearing a mask. I want to kill him. I want to leave. I want a family with dinners and drama not with war. I hate this war. I don’t want this war. _

_ I want to die. Maybe death would be easier than this. Sokka and Aang need to come. They need to come. They need to come. Come back to me.  _

**day thirty-one:**

The man who drops off her food doesn’t talk. He never does. She talked to herself at first but now she’s stopped. What does she say?

“Hello, Mom. I took care of everyone. Even Sokka. He tried his hardest to be a warrior and he was really annoying but I know that he misses you so much. I’m there for him. I always am.”

“I’m still mad at you for leaving, Dad. You don’t know what it did to us. I wanted you. I needed you. And now I’m never going to see you again. I don’t know if I’m going to forgive you.”

“Hey Sokka, you suck. I miss you. Come back to me. I need you. I can’t do this. I need you.” 

**day forty-three:**

She’s lying down and staring at the metal surface of the wall. It all blends together now. Her eyesight is blurry. 

That’s when she makes that decision, the last one she can. She sits up and bends her hands together, sitting down in nothing but her underclothes, the heat stifling — her furs are now a carpet so she doesn’t burn herself. 

This is the old Katara: sharp eyes, strong, powerful, better.

This is the new Katara: quiet, strong, proud,  _ here. _

She will survive this. She will. She will. 

**day fifty:**

They’re not coming back for her.

She burns her feet when she tears apart her fur jacket and throws its contents at the walls. Nobody loves her, especially new Katara. Who could love new Katara? Sokka isn’t coming back. Aang isn’t coming back.

Mother left, father left, Sokka left, everyone left. She deserves to be here. She should rot here. Of course, nobody loves her. Who could love her? Not a good bender, not a good daughter, not a good sister. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Terrible girls don’t have people come back for them. They deserve pain and bad things and this is a bad thing. She should be here. Especially new Katara. New Katara should be here.

Her head is pounding like it always is. She’s crying. She didn’t think she could create water anymore. Bad bender. Bad Katara. New Katara will be better. New Katara will take her punishment. She stares and stares at the metal. 

**day sixty-two:**

The box is nice. It’s tied up in a little bow and it sits in the corner of her mind. She doesn’t let the old Katara out. Nobody liked the old Katara. Someone will love new Katara. Someone will. This is all she can do. She can’t kill herself. She’s tried.

Sometimes when she gives the person the bucket or they slide in the dish she thinks about saying something. She tests out her voice and it croaks. No. No.

**day seventy-five:**

Mother’s smile. A necklace. Furs, she’s so hot. Noodles. Fish. Rice. Something spicy. Water. A mattress. Her waste bucket. Someone slides in an outfit. It’s a man’s. It’s red. She puts it on the floor. She can stay clean, she thinks. That is where the Fire Nation belongs. 

_ I hate you for doing this to me. I hate you. I hate you.  _

It goes black.

**day eighty-six:**

Mother. The Avatar. The war. A prince who took everything away from her. These are ideas in her mind, figments of her imagination.

The mirrors grow steamy. Does the water move when she thinks? No, stupid Katara. Good for nothing, Katara. Everyone left you, Katara.

Sit on the box. Carve it up, let it bleed. You’re better, you’re different, this is not you. You’re  _ here,  _ Katara. You’re alive. You don’t need anything else.

  
  


**day ninety-four:**

She stares at the walls. She’s not smiling. How long has it been? She thinks this is the seventh day. Maybe she can find herself like this, in this meditation. She hasn’t eaten. They don’t pick up any dishes, any waste. Maybe if she keeps doing this she will die.

Death sounds nice.

**day one-hundred:**

The door opens. There is a man there. He looks so concerned, his hair about his face. He pulls her off the floor, off the red Fire Nation clothes, and says something she doesn’t understand. Then she’s in a bath. She sits there for an hour. A woman comes and helps her out and puts her in red clothes. Why doesn’t she like red?

She has a room. She has a bed. She has chambers and a toilet. It feels luxurious. She is so confused. Fire Nation? There is an Avatar and there is a war. There is Sokka. Mother. Father.

She sees a window. It’s humid and there is something outside. It undulates and moves towards her, feels like it calls her. No. That feels like old Katara. That can go in the box. Every part of old Katara can go in the box. There is nothing to lose.

He drinks tea and talks to her. She stares.

**day one-hundred and eight:**

The box doesn’t want to touch the water. She thinks. Sokka, Dad, Aang. These are people. There was a Fire Prince. Something disappears in the sea. She feels like she should be finding answers here. All she’s thinking about is loss.

The sun is shining. She can barely see. She turns to him. “Where is the Avatar?”

What is this war? Old Katara is talking through her. 

He looks so sad. Like he’s trying to find old Katara.  _ No, you don’t want her. She would have disappointed you. Everyone left her.  _

“Dead.”

**after:**

This is a sort of salvation.

  
  
  
  



	7. adorned in light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko doesn't feel victorious.

Zuko doesn’t care very much about celebrations — he understands, abstractly, why they are important, that they make his people dance on the streets, but he gains no enjoyment from watching children twist and turn under the sun. 

A scowl is set into his face as he watches the processions below him, his fingers tapping on the window. Today is an important day for him, a celebration of the end of the war and the day he had aimed his fire at his father and even Azula had been frightened. It’s a celebration of his victory. The Fire Nation is stronger than ever in peacetime, the Avatar is dead, the Water Tribes are docile, the Earth Kingdom is his . . .

It all feels rather worthless. He turns from the window and ignores the guard standing outside the room he is loitering in. He’d done his due diligence and gone through the roads earlier today, so he is no longer indebted to his people. They are happy with him, now. The assassination attempts have decreased because it is the people of the Fire Nation who had the most to gain out of winning this war. Their troops have returned and trade regulations are lax; the economy has regrown. This is peace, the kind which they have not known for a hundred years.

He stalks toward his office with his face still set in a frown. He’d eschewed the tradition of always staying behind a wall of fire. He claims that he works better in his office and sitting on an open throne, and he knows people whisper that his fire is not powerful enough to keep up the barrier. They’re partly right, but it is more a question of control, and that is something he doesn’t have. The machinations of the court let him stew in his anger. He has never been like Azula, razor-focused with blue fire. He blazes hot and furious and uncontrollable. 

Is this power? He leaves the guard outside and closes his door quietly and firmly, wanting to slam it but not wanting gossip to spread. He should sign off on the subsidies today, he should read about the trade agreements between the colonies. His wooden desk is glossy but the surface is ink-stained, carrying the remnants of late nights and tantrums. He settles down into his cushioned chair with a light exhale and then clutches an agreement. The characters blur in front of his eyes.

He doesn’t want to do this right now. He drops the papers and leans back, pressing his hands up to his temples. All he sees are numbers and vicious nobles and dinner parties and . . . too much. 

At first he’d thought that Azula would take up the internal tasks often carried out by the palace’s Fire Lady, but she’d scoffed the minute he’d subjected it. In retrospect, he should have known that she would never be happy ensuring the royal household or hosting visiting nobles. He has his housekeepers manage the majority of the slack but they usually defer back to him on menial tasks anyways. 

Katara would ideally work in such a role, but she isn’t exactly in the right mind to conduct household affairs either. His fingers play with his topknot. It’s been four years, should he even try again? She will be him for the rest of both their lives; perhaps he should ask her two insufferable friends to aid her with her tasks. She’s not the Fire Lady yet, he remembers, but she will be expected to do these things in a bit. 

Yes, in a bit. His eyes briefly light up and he opens the small compartment underneath the desk’s wooden top to pull out a silk ribbon, crimson red, and a marble. The items are small but they feel terribly heavy in his hands. 

She’s awfully protective of her necklace, the one which he knows once belonged to her mother. She doesn’t take it off and he studies it whenever she sleeps. When he’d first had his scribes look into betrothal ceremonies in the Water Tribes he hadn’t been very surprised to see  _ necklaces  _ in the list they’d sent him.  _ Men handcraft such pieces for their future wives,  _ the list had written, and he’d driven himself further into the scroll.  _ They carve the pendant so that it is meaningful to them; in arranged marriages a symbol of their conjoined families, in love marriages a symbol of what binds them.  _

He’d had the thin ribbon ordered and made of the softest silk and found the beautiful white marble in his mother’s old vault. He’s unsure why she even owned such a smooth stone but it had called to him. And yet those parts were easy. It had taken him days to decide what to carve into the stone.

What is a symbol of his love for Katara? A ship at night, a sort of heart, a mind ripped in two? Torture and peace? It isn’t destructive but it’s beautiful and creative. He wouldn’t call it obsessive even if the twittering servants who speak in rumors would. It just exists even though he can admit that both of them are broken people.

She’d been asleep and he’d held the stone in his palm and thought and thought about what to put on it until he got overwhelmed and out of control and it — it  _ cracked, _ a line right through the middle. When he’d released his flame he’d half expected it to fall apart into ash but it had stayed together. A wound that runs deep and a rock that doesn’t break. 

He’d traced the crack and then her brow before going to sleep. Now he holds it in his hand and heats up his fingers to mold the stone to the ribbon. When he finishes he has a product of his love in his hands. His eyes narrow. He can imagine this around her neck, perhaps underneath her mother’s, a sign of  _ him.  _

He’ll give it to her tonight. He reverently places the necklace back into its compartment and picks up the trade treaty again, preparing to sign dozens of papers. The sun is lower in the horizon. Katara is likely in the courtyard — or perhaps Ty Lee had brought her to the circus, he thinks and then stalks out of his chair and opens his door. There are two guards stationed outside and both give him tight nods and keep their heads down.

He gestures to the one on the left. “Go, tell the staff that I would like them to set up Lady Katara’s favorite meal for dinner tonight on one of the ships — not an airship, one of the smaller royal ones — by dusk.”

The guard gives him a tight salute and leaves, and he lets the door slam a little on the way back in. 

* * *

They did a good job. He realizes that he could have perhaps had them dine on the ship where they first met and then thinks that ship likely holds terrible memories for her as well. Katara favors this ship when they go out to look at the ocean, as its build is lower than the others. He thinks she likes being close to the water even if she cannot bend.

Lanterns are strewn across the wooden deck and they both lounge on cushions. They are not being served. A variety of the different foods she enjoys are strewed across on the long table that has been brought up, and he serves her first, as usual. She gives him a light smile as she slowly starts consuming her broth.

She has been a little different lately, a little less removed. One day she had come back from the market and she had  _ hugged  _ him — it was intimate, strangely, more so than the kisses they commonly trade. And ever since that night she has been closer, giving him smiles that look a little brighter and looking into his eyes. He can’t tell if they’re less cloudy or just if he’s grown used to their dullness.

He talks through the entire meal, as he’s now prone to do. He fills in the conversation for her talking about random treaties he has signed. He talks about how he feels like he should have felt prouder when he went through the streets this morning. He talks about Azula’s newest rampage and how he had to send Mai to her to calm her down. He talks to her about how he’s losing control again. She says nothing but she takes his hand after they finish their meal and looks straight into his eyes as he finishes his messy rantings. 

He wants to end on a positive note — he’s building new memories for her, he wants them to be good — so he asks her a question. “Is there anywhere you would like to go?”

Katara looks confused at that so he elaborates. “Somewhere outside the palace . . . we’ve been here for years, and I think that the chances of a coup have been significantly lowered. I want to take you somewhere, in a bit. We can go all around the Fire Nation and perhaps even to the Earth Kingdom . . . is there anywhere you want to go?”

Newly married couples, after all, often tour their future land. They are just ahead of schedule. She leans back and places a finger on her chin like she’s in thought. 

“Home,” she says, with a sort of finality. He grabs her. 

“This is your home.”

“No,  _ home,”  _ she says. He wishes he could pretend he doesn’t know what she means but he does, so he leans back and relaxes his hand over her back.

“I’ll take you,” he simply promises. He will take her to the Southern Water Tribe one day. One day which is very far away. Then he takes in a deep breath, ready to ask the penultimate question, before exhaling it. He grabs her hand and pulls her up. She’s not heavy at all but a bit of a deadweight.

He gestures to the front of the ship and she grabs his elbow as they walk to it. The moon is bright today, full. When he turns to her she’s looking at it wistfully. If she was still a waterbender this would be the time she would be strongest. He gazes out at it as well, like some part of him is also missing. Then he turns to her, reaching for the necklace in his pocket.

“Katara . . .” she turns to face him with a questioning look and he gives her the kind of smile he reserves just for her. She looks down at the necklace and her face doesn’t change. “Would you . . . would you be my Fire Lady?”

Some part of him thinks that he shouldn’t need to ask this question. He’s taken everything he’s wanted in his life so far. He took the entire world. He doesn’t need to ask for her hand, he doesn’t, not like he let her kiss him first. The other part just wants to hear her answer.

She’s perplexed and she’s not staring at him, just the necklace. He almost chokes when she reaches up to grab the one hanging around her throat. Her eyes go through the pattern he never wants to see, alight and then closed, but then they brighten for a second and she puts her hand out. She hasn’t said anything yet but he lets the ribbon pool into her palm.

She holds up the cracked marble to the light, her eyes tracing the fissures in the stone sent against the sky. He almost gasps when he sees the resemblance in shape and color to the moon. She does too. 

Her gaze flits between the object above her and the one in her hand, almost ignoring him. He can feel the battleground, can feel the warring in her mind as she lets her hand limp. Then she turns around and rams herself into his arms. There are tears against him.

“Yes,” she says, strong and firm and loud. “Yes.” 


	8. pull me into focus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wedding.

Zuko faces the room in front of them and Katara has her back turned so that she doesn’t have to see the faces of dozens of nobles through the veil which hangs around her eyes. It’s not traditional, at all, to have the ceremony this way, but nobody is about to tell that to the Fire Lord. _This is my word and my word is law,_ he’s prone to say, and it’s true. 

They’ve just drunk the ceremonial wine and the Fire Sage moves back and speaks, solemnly. “Do you have any words to say, Lady Katara?”

She shakes her head, something he knew she would do. Then the old man turns to him and he holds up a hand to let him know he doesn’t need the prompt. His voice is low, not meant for the crowd below them, and he looks at where her eyes are located underneath the fabric and reaches out to hold her hands. That’s definitely not allowed and the audience below starts murmuring at the motion but it takes nothing but a small glance from him to quiet them. 

“Lady Katara,” he starts strong, “I love you . . . I have ever since that first day on the ship. I would — I will stay by your side as you will have me, so that the world may bow down to us, so that I will give you everything I have and that you will ever desire. And let it be known,” he speaks louder, his voice echoing through the chamber, “that there is only one person in this world I shall ever bow down to.”

Then he leans down until his heavy robes are splayed across the ground and his head is leaning down in front of her so he is staring at her bare and painted feet. The gasps he hears are loud but he pays them no heed. _This is my word and my word is law._ He thinks he hears her inhale a bit too, but he can’t really tell. When he rises her hands are still in his grasp and she squeezes them. 

The rest of the ceremony is a bit of a blur. They stand and listen to the Sage as he proclaims them husband and wife and wishes the Fire Lord a happy birthday in tandem. With a cursory nod Zuko takes his wife’s elbow and they attend the post-reception, taking place as the sun starts going down. It is, somewhat, a birthday party as well, but aside from the few rather quiet toasts wishing him a happy twentieth year the focus is on the royal couple. 

He’s sure he has conversations with plenty of his cabinet members with Katara by his side but he doesn’t remember them by the time the moon starts shining through the hall’s window. He gets a few side-eyes from the more promiscuous nobles as he grabs his wife’s hand and leads them back to their room. Most know of the fact that they have slept together for the past four years and don’t think it will be a magnanimous occasion. He smiles and knows better.

* * *

  
  


_What are you doing? Why are you doing this? You cannot come back from this Katara. You are going to be stuck here forever Katara. Have you truly lost your mind here?_

_What are you going to do? You are the Fire Lady. The Fire Lady, Katara. You are going to work with the country which destroyed you. You know what you are going to do now? You are going to sleep with him. You are going to have children with him and you are never going to escape this place._

_I like him._

_Do you like him or is this a figment of your imagination?_

_He has never hurt me. He is kind to me. He bowed to me._

_This is a lie, Katara. He does not care about you. He has touched you and —_

_He has never touched me without my consent. He has given me everything I want and he —_

_Will he send you home?_

_He said he will._

_You are weak to trust the Fire Lord. All he cares about his your destruction. This is an elaborate ploy._

_It has been four years and he speaks to me in confidence and lets me do whatever I wish. What sort of ploy would this be?_

_He wants your bending. He wants you at his feet._

_He bowed to me. He bowed to me in front of all of his people and he is the most powerful person in the world. I cannot bend._

_And that is what you wish to be? A tool, then._

_Not a tool. He loves me._

_How could you love him?_

_I don’t._

_You will. You cannot live out the rest of this life without loving him._

_Go away. Nobody liked you and nobody will. I can take my life back like this._

_You are really going to start opening the box._

_I am still strong inside my mind. I will. I will._

_You will regret this._

When she opens her eyes again Zuko has also undressed out of his robes and has crawled up beside her, reaching over to twist his hands through her flowing hair. His isn’t quite as thick but she does the same until they are both holding each other’s faces. He gives her a small smile and she knows it might be because she has clear eyes again. It’s different.

“Did you mean it?”

He combs through her hair and splotches of red grow on his cheeks. He’s barely a man, she thinks, and she is barely a woman. It’s like they’ve lived a lifetime during their childhoods. This should have been the beginning. She thinks about the vague idea of home she has in her head, a place that is always cold. Where would she be if she had stayed there? Why did she leave? Would she still have met Zuko had her course not changed?

Does she have regrets from that moment? She lost everyone who she cared about and she gained him and he might not be worth all of that destruction. But he is worth something. No, she would not have ended up in his bed had she not placed old Katara into the box. There should be a right answer to these questions. There was one four years ago. Where has it gone? The face in front of her has two eyes, one wide open and one scarred over and a little blind, and they are gold and she can’t look away.

“Yes,” he says, “yes I did.” Then he pauses and his cheeks grow redder. She’s never seen this look on him before, he is always so composed. In front of her, at least. She’s heard of violent tantrums from his maids and she can see when half of the palace burns. That Zuko is not her Zuko. “Please, Katara, please give me this night with you. Please speak to me,” he whispers, “please.”

She should say no. She hasn’t thought about it but the correct answer to those words is ‘no’. But she can’t let it escape her mouth. It has been years and she hasn’t ever held a small conversation with him.

He told her that he would give her the world. She can owe him this. “Alright.”

Her voice isn’t weak with disuse anymore, and the syllables sound out. He smiles and she remembers that first kiss she’d given him. The next morning she’d been surprised when she hadn’t regretted it. Is she willing to give more tonight?

They’re both experts at speaking with eyes, and she sees her question reflected into his.

“Thank you for today,” her lips move. In the morning they had woken up and gone to her favorite ship and he had done what he told her was the wedding ceremony of her people as best as he could. She doesn’t quite know if the ribbon ceremony was right, or if the words he stuttered through in an ancient language were, but she had appreciated the gesture. 

“You never have to thank me. I . . . would do anything to put that smile on your face,” he smooths over the corner of her lips and it grows.

“No, Zuko,” he gasps and she thinks. Has she ever said his name before? She must have. “It helped . . . so thank you.”

His grin wanes. She thinks about this a lot. She wants to get better. Does he want old Katara or new Katara? Could he live with both? She knows that old Katara could not live with him. Old Katara could waterbend and she would drown him. She couldn’t drown him. Could she hurt him? When she remembers what he has done she probably will. How could he negate all of that?

He doesn’t know what she’s thanking him for, what he’s helping with, and it’s better for the both of them that he lives in ignorance.

“And I was meaning to talk with you . . . you’re the Fire Lady, now. Do you think you could help with the household? You could get your ladies to do it with you and I’ll keep doing it if you don’t want to, please don’t feel pressured —”

There are heavy bags under his eyes, more visible to her than the public. He covers them with makeup when he gets ready. He wakes up so early. She runs her fingers over them. “I’ll try. I want to help you.”

He blushes again, so uncharacteristically. “I still cannot believe, a little . . . you’re my Fire Lady.”

“Yes,” she doesn’t quite know what to say. And then he reaches for her fingers on his face. 

“I love you, Katara,” he looks so hopeful. “Do you . . . do you love me?”

_I don’t know you so I can’t love you. I can love the part of you I see at night but not the part before four years ago, not the part which blows up the palace. I am not in love with that Zuko. I might hate him a little bit._

“I do,” she says because it isn’t exactly a lie.

“Really?” that look on his face is too much. She turns off the box again and looks down.

“Yes. I love you, Zuko.”

Not Prince Zuko, not Fire Lord Zuko, Zuko. He must not know the difference. He looks so happy, it hurts a little. “Can I . . ?”

She gave him permission through eyes, but this time it’s he who reaches down and kisses her, his lips covering hers in a way that feels like he’s trying to consume her. The physical feeling lets a familiar shiver run down her spine and when she lets go she gasps, louder than she usually does. The innocent hope has disappeared from his face but the smirk he’s wearing doesn’t seem too terrible. It still feels like Zuko. 

She reaches up and resumes the kiss, letting her hands wander down from his face to his mangled ear to his neck and then around his chest. Her robe opens from the front and he bends down to untie it, looking up as he does. “I love you,” he reminds her.

Katara thinks about the Fire Lord bowing to her, thinks about who warms her when she shivers, thinks about the hand on her elbow when she feels like breaking. Then she thinks about the murder stories she has heard, thinks about Iroh’s warning words, thinks about a boy on a canoe and another in an iceberg.

“I love you,” she says and her heart refuses to ache.

_A whirlwind of colors. You are still two people but you have chosen which one you want to be here, the kind which can overlook horrors. Plenty of people have fallen in love without knowing the consequences of such an action._

_I haven’t fallen in love._

_No, you haven’t. Do not think that you are free from your own lies. Your destiny is not in place yet._

_I don’t want you here._

_Have this moment for yourself. Fate would not begrudge you some peace._

  
  



	9. flip a switch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sokka and Suki scene.

“Katara?”

There is a man in front of her — she looks to the side and her guards are nowhere to be found. She’s alone in the market, something she hasn’t been . . . ever. He looks so similar and yet older than she knows, an adult. There is a girl next to him with a painted face, holding a fan and with a fierce look in her eyes.

He stares at her, at her confused expression, and something in his eyes shatters. “It’s me, Katara. Sokka?”

The box creaks open with a kind of finality, light reaching into its contents. “Sokka?” her voice cracks.

He rushes at her and she is trapped in his arms — it feels so different, so good, so right, like a part of her is missing, yet together, it’s  _ everything. _ “Oh, Katara,” he says into her hair before pulling away. “What . . . what happened to you? You’re . . . the Fire Lady?”

Her eyebrows twist and she nods. She can talk, she should, but her brain is overwhelmed. There are so many things she wants to say. 

_ Where were you? You left me. You didn’t come back. I thought you were dead. I thought you were all dead. You left me. I miss you so much it still hurts and I didn’t even know it. Do you know that kind of pain? This is what has happened to me you left me and he found me and nobody is right here. I don’t know anyone but myself and I cannot even trust myself. How dare you. How dare he. How dare I. Yes, I am the Fire Lady. I said yes and now I am and you are five years too late. I love you and I miss you.  _

He waits for more but it doesn’t come, — her voice is still caught in her chest — and then he looks even more heartbroken. The girl behind him walks up and whispers something in his ear, and then he repeats, “What happened to you?”

A tear leaves her eye and she doesn’t know which words she wants to escape her mouth. What comes next after this? Does she tell him — no, she’s in too deep. But as the box keeps opening, like a match being lit behind her eyelids, she has a question for him instead. The ship. “What happened to you?”

The words aren’t accusatory. She’s lost all sense of tone. He steps back like he’s been burned. “I . . . I thought you were dead, for the longest time. We,” he gestures to the woman next to him, whose expression is indecipherable through her layers of paint, “we’ve been in hiding and we didn’t get much news. And then we did. News that you were . . . Fire Lady,” he says like he can barely make out the words.

She’d thought about this moment when she was stuck in the room. But that Sokka had been shorter and less broad and just . . . different. And he had been on time. She can talk but she doesn’t want to, and then the girl speaks up. 

“I’m Suki.”

“She was a Kyoshi warrior,” he says like that should mean anything to her, “she’s my wife.” And that does. 

“Where have you been?” as she releases the words she hears a strange noise sound behind her, somewhat mechanical. It’s her guards, realizing that she’s missing. She doesn’t have much time.

“Undercover in an Earth Kingdom town . . . but Katara. I didn’t know you were here. I thought he’d killed you. I thought they . . . like they killed Mom. Aang and I, we went back but there were so many ships and then I . . . I thought you were . . .”

She doesn’t want to hear this. “Dad? Aang?”

There’s a piece of the past that she doesn’t want to acknowledge, tucked away in a back corner, and she’ll deal with it later. She will. 

“Dad . . . he was executed. Put in the Boiling Rock and then executed,” he says stoutly like he’s trying to not feel anything. They stay silent a second after that, hearing rocks move in the ground outside the alley, and all three of them move further into it until their entire bodies are clothed in darkness.

“And —”

“Aang — we were in the North Pole and the . . . Zuko and Azula came and he said he could fight them and he went into Avatar state and I didn’t see the rest.”

“Oh.”

“Katara. I’m going to kill him — that  _ Fire Lord —  _ I swear, I will destroy him for doing this to you, for taking you and touching you and —”

“It’s not . . .”

“Not what?” Suki speaks up, and she’s much more put together than Sokka is. 

Oh, Agni and Tui and La and all of the spirits. She knows what’s sitting in the box but she doesn’t want to open it because she knows it’s going to hurt so much. She thinks about Aang, a twelve-year-old in an iceberg. Did Zuko destroy him? Zuko couldn’t do that. But Zuko also could, the other Zuko, Fire Lord Zuko, the one which cares so much and has done so much and . . . there’s only one truth here. There is.

“He’s not that bad,” she swallows, and she doesn’t have regret even as they both adopt looks of confusion she can barely see in the dim light. He’s going to be so concerned that she got lost. He barely lets her out as it is. How did they manage to find her like this? Sokka’s eyes look like they’re almost bulging out of his head. She winces.

“Katara,” Suki says slowly, and she frowns at this girl who doesn’t even know her who’s acting like she does. They can’t tell her what she feels and what she deserves. 

“He loves me, Sokka,” she addresses her brother, and his expression only seems to grow more shocked. “I . . . he hasn’t ever touched me if I haven’t let him, and he . . . he tries so hard . . .”

“Katara,” Suki repeats like she’s consoling a child. She’s not that weak. She doesn’t need to be treated like this. She’s aware. She is. “You’ve been here for a long time . . . you can’t tell us that you  _ wanted  _ to be Fire Lady.”

Before she can respond Sokka’s voice sounds, out loud and hardened. “Is that a betrothal necklace?”

The cracked stone is visible beneath her mother’s, surrounded by a sea of crimson. The red and blue strangely suit each other, look at home on her throat, the depth of the colors becoming one with her skin. 

“Yes,” she says softly, reaching to touch the marble. “He made it for me. And I said yes.”

That shattered look in his eyes comes back and Suki steps up again, pushing Sokka behind her. “What . . . what happened after you two were separated?”

Katara shrugs but she doesn’t want the memories to come back. “I was put in a cell. And then I was taken out. And then . . . I met Zuko.”

Suki looks at her calculatingly before softening. “Katara, he’s . . . you’ve been here for so long. He’s confused you.”

“I’m not confused,” she’s spent so much time being confused. She’s not. She just knows some truths. 

“You can’t tell me you seriously think he loves you . . .” she says back almost condescendingly, and Katara, for the first time in an entire lifetime, wants to jump forwards and just hit the other girl. Because he does love her. There is a universe alive and the only thing she thinks that she might know is that Zuko, the one at night, loves her. He does in the only way she knows.

“He does. He does love me.”

Her words are resolute and Suki opens her mouth again but Sokka pushes her behind him and takes his sister’s hands in his. His hands are rough and calloused and not that warm, sort of cold to the touch, and they feel familiar. Sitting on canoes and in front of campfires and living out a life with this boy . . . the memories flood into her brain and she wants to fall apart a little bit at them. He was all she really had. He’s  _ Sokka.  _ She loves him. She missed him so much. 

A part of her just wants to reach out and put her arms around him but he looks terrified as he stares into her eyes. “Come back with us.”

A rush of emotions and then she wants to pull away. “What — Sokka, I can’t —”

“We live in a small town and nobody there would say a word and we’d keep you hidden anyway and he would never find you — and you can meet my daughter, your  _ niece,  _ Katara, and you can forget what he’s done, forget all of this.”

Some part of her can’t quite comprehend what he’s saying.  _ Leave?  _

What does she have here? She has a family of her own kind that she doesn’t want to lose, the kind in the palace and Iroh’s teashop. She has her maids and she has Azula’s uncaring words and the strange whispers and the delicate treatments and the pedestal she’s placed on.

But does she want to forget all of this? She thinks about the girl who couldn’t waterbend at all, who slipped off a bison, who sat and danced with the children and tried to catch fish with her brother. She can never go back to that life. She will never, again, be that Katara. But where will she go if she leaves? To Sokka and Suki’s little Earth Kingdom home? Where she will hide from someone who cares about her, where . . . no. She is old Katara and new Katara and there will be no other Kataras. She is every part of herself together and lost is a four-letter word but so is love.

It’s taken her too long to choose nothing. She doesn’t mind this, she never will, this is too much and too complicated and falling apart. “I can’t,” she gasps and falls over, and she knows she shouldn’t she should be careful — 

“We can fix this,” Sokka begs lowly and also vengefully, and this is all wrong, and she grabs his hand and puts it on her stomach and — 

Fire Nation clothing is light but her robes are conservative because she is the Fire Lady and she is weak and the rounding of her stomach is hard to see especially in this light but the tightness is obvious, just clear, and she knows that he knows, and then Suki’s unfamiliar hand is tracing her and the other woman is gasping.

“No,” Sokka says, “no.”

It’s Suki who turns around and gives her a look of sadness which feels so strange to receive from someone she doesn’t even know. “They’ll be okay. We can get away.”

“I can’t leave this behind. All of it.”

And then her eyes, beneath the layers of makeup, turn cold. “How do you look at him at night?”

“Suki!”

Such an apt question, meant to pull apart her heartstrings and destroy her and help her make a decision about what the right thing is. There is no right thing here and that is what nobody understands. She is not fourteen in a prison cell, she is married and she is pregnant and she has a role to play in all this and she just wants to be selfish and she doesn’t even know what that entails? There is nothing she can do here. There is no way either Katara can win.

“He took you from your family.”

“He’s my husband.”

“That doesn’t take away  _ everything else —” _

“I am not,” she breathes, “going to take my child away from their father.”

Sokka is still torn apart as he takes his hand off her stomach and moves it to her face, cradling her cheeks. “He took you away from your mother.”

_ And that is what she has been keeping in the box, and it is crawling out and it is so alive and it hurts more than anything else she has ever felt . . .  _

She stays silent because that is all she has learned how to do and that is how  _ this  _ Katara stays strong, by choosing her battles even when they are invisible, by making selfish choices, by refusing to do the right thing. How is she going to look at Zuko today night? How is she going to crawl into bed and have him look at her like she is his sky and like he loves her and loves them, like he hasn’t killed and isn’t terrible and wants to do what’s right? What is this right? She has been here for five years and her heart aches and is split in two because  _ she never wanted this.  _

“You would raise a dictator,” Suki responds back quietly, and Sokka lurches like he wants her to stop talking but then he looks at her like he’s given up.

“Would you?”

Silence, silence, silence, win the war your own way, and they take that as her response. 

“We’re on the outskirts of Chin Village,” Suki says. Then: “Your guards are almost here.”

She’s left in an alley quietly staring at a blank wall, her hand on her stomach and her mind exploding in on itself. 

* * *

  
  


The room is dark when he comes in because she doesn’t want to see his face and the scar. He pays it no heed, just lights up his palm and changes before sliding into the bed next to her, pressing his lips to her stomach.

“Girl or boy?” 

She doesn’t say anything because there isn’t anything  _ for  _ her to say that he wants to hear. She just closes her eyes, opens the box, reconciles herself, and places a hand next to his head on the slight bump above her waistband. She can’t waterbend, can’t feel veins and blood, but she knows the heartbeat within her. 

_ For you,  _ Katara thinks,  _ I will do anything. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm renaming this 'violent reflections' -- 'time takes these angry and violent things' is a bit of a mouthful!


	10. time bombs

“What are you doing?” Azula falls into place next to Katara, and she bites her cheek to refrain from wincing at the intrusion into her mental space. Yes, Azula is relatively — not a terror to her, maybe. For whatever reason, she’s used as the prodigy’s sounding board and spa partner, not often out of choice. Perhaps it’s because she’s quiet and Azula thinks that she’s docile and not a threat. It isn’t wrong, that observation. She isn’t really a threat. She can’t be. Even as all the Kataras . . . not right now.

She holds up the needle on her finger to let her sister-in-law guess what she’s doing, and then falls back into her sewing, rhythmically turning the point through soft silk. Azula hums. “Mai uses knives and needles just like that, you know.” 

Yes, she knows, and she doesn’t care because Zuko loves _her —_ that’s the single thing she knows. That he loves her and he loves their child, at least. The tiny suit she’s crafting, made of blue, isn’t done in a style that’s uniquely Fire Nation. Azula sniffs at it before sighing. “Blue is fine, I suppose. Like my fire,” and she lights up her fingers in an unneeded demonstration of her prowess. “Still, make a suit in red. Or better yet, spend your time on better tasks than sewing clothes for your child. We have more than enough people here ready to do that, we can go to the spa —”

In moments like these she is able to understand that Azula is just another girl her age. Yet when her sister reaches out to drag the outfit she’s been working on for so long away — the outfit she’s recalled parts of her memory, long gone, for — she reacts instinctively, the dormant part of her reaching out and burrowing the thin stick into Azula’s pale palm. The shriek the girl emits seconds later is frightening and makes her wince back. 

What did she just do? Nothing good because she thinks Azula might hurt her. There’s a single bead of blood against the girl’s manicured hands that looks so strange and her eyes are sparking and . . . Katara’s first instinct is to place her hands around her middle and scoot away from the fountain’s edge, the cloth next to her chest. 

“Katara! That was —” _warranted,_ some part of her thinks, and she opens her lips breathily and knits her brows together. For a second she’s terrified -- she might actually be targeted by the insane girl -- but then someone calls across the courtyard.

“Katara! Azula, _what are you doing —_ you know she’s —”

Azula reaches away and draws the needle out of her hand as Zuko comes by, dangling it in front of her brother’s eyes. He’s dressed in his full regalia, and he rounds the corner to place an arm around Kataras’s shoulders before settling his hand on her stomach. She feels calm. Her heart, at least, feels calm. There is only one task she has right now, only one thing she needs to do. And that is to keep her daughter safe. From anyone — from her brother, from Zuko’s sister. It’s a hard world.

_Her daughter._ She doesn’t know for certain but she . . . she thinks it’s a girl. She hasn’t told him yet. She doesn’t know how he’ll feel about that but she thinks . . . she thinks he’ll be happy. Happy about his wife and his child. Good to them. She has to put everything else aside for now, right now. If she thinks about anything else right now she . . . she can’t think about anything else right now. She has him and she has what she needs and she likes him. She does.

“She hurt me, Zuzu,” Azula pouts, and Zuko clutches Katara closer to him. She tilts until she’s flush against his chest, facing the side of him that isn’t scarred. Nice. This is nice. 

“You’re fine. She didn’t mean to.”

And Azula can’t refute that point, because this Katara doesn’t mean much of anything. She exists as a tool and stays close to him and that’s it. Maybe she’s his weakness but she’s not even certain about that. The girl gets up and stomps away, likely in the direction of her war rooms or her spas — there are really only two places she frequents — and Zuko’s fingers dance across her spine. They make her shiver and she lets it slip. 

“It’s a girl.” That’s also changed, the full sentences. He thinks it’s new because of the pregnancy, had taken her to the healer to see if the hormones in her brain had fixed her somehow; she knows a dark alley and the truth. The sun is warm on her open skin and yet she shudders into him. He rests a warm hand on the bump and she sighs.

“A girl,” he says with an emotion she can’t comprehend — when she looks up into his eyes they’re stormy and she doesn’t pry further. “I have a name, then.”

No, she has a name. This is Kya — her daughter’s name is Kya, her real name. She knows, knew, that she would not have a choice in this, in choosing her child’s name, and that rankles her. But names are words and words are power and she knows this. She places a small hand over his and compresses her fingers. _Kya,_ she thinks. _I’m your mother and that’s your name._

“What do you think about Soza? After Fire Lord Sozin, of course. I think it’s befitting,” his words don’t match how he stares at her adoringly. “After all, we’ve ended the war.”

His words are lax and just facts because they’re his truth and a part of her wants _to speak out against him_ — but that Katara falls to the wayside as she smiles softly at him and nods, snuggling into his outer robes again in order to ignore his forced small talk. She doesn’t like small talk. She doesn’t want to talk about the sun or the weather. Just the things that matter. She can use his voice like she can use hers.

She’s reminded of the outfit she’s been sewing and presents it to him. He runs his hand lovingly over the small details she’s incorporated into the child’s dress, the wave stitching, done in a Fire Nation style but in blue. And a unique shape. He frowns. “Do you remember some more of your culture, then? I’ve never seen these shapes before.”

Yes, she does. All the parts of her do and she wants her child to have everything. Kya will have everything but most of all she’ll have love, no matter what. “In my head,” she softly whispers, and he grins back at her, teeth blinding before leaning down to her stomach and pressing his nose against their little girl.

“Look how much your mother loves you. Look how much I do. You’ll have everything, Soza, won’t you?”

“Everything important,” he thinks she repeats but she knows she’s not. 

They sit there in the heat for a few moments before he takes in the beads of sweat at her brow. “Let’s go in.” 

She acquiesces but glances at him strangely as he accompanies into the hall. He’s still smiling and he notices. “What?”

Her fingers reach out to touch the corners of his mouth, and he grasps them where they are, holding her wrists in this random corridor. He just stares at her, and as her heartrate smoothens, his grin widens. It’s not uncharacteristic for their bed but it’s uncharacteristic here. And . . . “You have work?” 

“No,” Zuko shakes his head, his topknot and crown staying on top of his hairdo. She wears a similar crown, but her hair has always been heavy, and she barely realizes it’s there. “I don’t have work today. I wanted to . . . let’s go out to the shipyard. Let’s . . . where I gave you this,” he reaches out and lightly fingers the necklace. “I want to be with you,” he says so freely, so openly, that of course she can’t say no. Of course she can’t help how his strange optimism floods through her face too. It hurts, a little, how unbearably free she feels in this moment. She shouldn’t feel good, especially now that she’s so aware of her chains.

The heat is sticky, but he exchanges his formal robes for light armor when they stop in their rooms, and she slides on a light dress, using his help to drape the fabric over her head and let it flow across her stomach. When they face each other in the mirror he smiles and she looks at herself; draped in red, _raising a dictator,_ looking so gloriously happy — and grows terrified of herself. Because this isn’t how this goes and she doesn’t like this and she doesn’t want this and — this is not how she should be feeling. This is the wrong Katara because it’s both Kataras. And she’s losing herself. She is. She . . . should she have taken Sokka’s hand?

She doesn’t have time to answer her own question before he’s swept her out the door and into a palanquin, trapping them inside the small space as they make their way to the beach. They’re on opposite sides at first, but then he places her hands inside of his and . . . _they doubted her and him. How could they doubt him? How could anyone doubt this man with the sun in his eyes, shining so violently, reflecting like peace . . ._

The ship they’d met on, the one she enjoys because it’s near the water . . . it’s docked close to where they land and he grabs her waist and lifts her off their vehicle, not minding her silent and odd protests to his touch. Walking is hard, and can get sore now, but she ignores the way her feet move against her and steps onto the small dock, the place where she’d said yes. It’s been ages since she’s been near the water. He’s holding her hand and she raises her head up to smell the salt on the water; it’s a bit unfamiliar but it sinks into her skin. It’s . . . it feels different, now.

How long has it been? What is this? Why . . . something strange happens in her stomach and she reaches down to calm down Kya, suddenly kicking and bursting with emotion. Zuko notices the movement and feels his daughter. “She likes the water, doesn’t he?” he teases before his mouth quirks to the side and he looks a little distraught. “I wonder if she’s a waterbender. I wonder if she can be.”

She shrugs because she doesn’t know the answer to that question and doesn’t know what the follow-up should be. New Katara doesn’t know the answer to that question, at least, the part he knows . . . but she knows the truth, the real part of her. But some part of her is still a little scared to tell the Fire Lord that his heir is not a firebender. He wouldn’t hurt Kya, would he? No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

_He wouldn’t. He loves her. He loves you and you’re a —_

_No I’m not._

_Think again. You opened the box._

What is she telling herself? She can’t tell herself that. She can’t do this in front of — _but he loves you and you . . . you love him._

_I do. I do love him._

_What is love if not something you can retake your soul for?_

_I’m scared._

_And what are you learning from that?_

She doesn’t know. The answer is that she doesn’t know _it is that simple._ But she can find out. Finding out would be so easy. _So easy —_

Trust is what she tells herself as she moves aside from Zuko and raises a hand out towards the ocean, towards the sun, at its zenith. This isn’t the best time to bend and the waves are faint under her fingertips but they exist and she has them and . . . and she exhales and she breaks the universe.

When she turns to the side she thinks she’ll see a burning sun — all she visualizes is peace in its aftermath. 

  
  
  
  



	11. could be forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Katara meet someone from the Northern Water Tribe.

“Katara?”

She doesn’t move out of the bed, still asleep. He’s not quite sure what he expected from her — she always wakes up late, not with the sun like he does. Not that he sleeps much at all, but that’s fine. He can sleep with her and admire her soft, calm features in the light of the morning. She’s gorgeous, some sort of painting, something that is _all his._

She might break if he pushes her too hard, if he jumps too fast, but that’s fine. He can wait. He can be careful. He just wants to move her a little bit forward. 

He frowns at her prone form and heats up one of his hands, slightly, and runs it across her spine. She moans and turns around, and he presses his fingers across her face, swiping up past her prominent cheekbones and her eyebrows. They’re less sharp than they were a year ago, but they’re still easier to see than they should be. It’s funny that her beauty is so striking when her personality is . . . is not. 

_Whose fault is that?_

“Katara,” he pushes her forward again. Her eyelashes flutter, and a moment later she’s looking up at him blearily, cloudily. His heart sinks but flies at the same time; he’s not sure why. He’s just not quite sure what he wants from her, whether he wants them to be clear or not, whether he wants her or not. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what fixing her _means._ But he will uphold that promise to Uncle; she will have the world. That’s all he can give her in this life, the only unique part of him that he can hand over. 

She doesn’t know that, probably wouldn’t care. Her mental energy is caught up in her own mental anguish, and she lets him do what he wants, but he wants to do what she wants, and it is . . . so, so confusing. He is so lost. 

Katara stares at him and lifts out her hand so that her fingers fall on his lips. They don’t press on him, exactly — just graze across them before they descend back to the red bedclothes. He grabs them and raises them back to his mouth, kisses them before keeping them firmly against his warm cheeks. He can’t tell if the blush is due to him or his midmorning heat. 

“Hey,” he says softly, closing his fingers over hers. She doesn’t move, of course, but he thinks that her expression might relax back a little bit. “We’re going to go see a healer today, again.”

In a quick flip her expression turns almost panicked, and she tries to turn over, but he stops her, placing his other hand on her shoulder. He knows what’s wrong. “Don’t worry. They’re not Fire Nation. They’re from the Northern Water Tribe. Do you know the Northern Water Tribe?”

Her breathing evens out, and he lets go of her shoulder and moves to sit sideways on the bed, running his fingers through her knotted hair. She’s so, so beautiful. He knows what the problem is — or rather, he knows it exists, though not the cause. Katara hadn’t responded well to the first healers he’d brought her to, particularly the ones that had been slightly intrusive. He has his own physicians for menial things, but her soul, stuck in her mind, is a different beast. At first they’d gone to regular healers, and then he’d frequented apothecaries — the same ones his mother used to, for her own reasons — and then, last month, he’d taken her to the Fire Sages. They’d met in a room full of fire, and she’d turned utterly helpless in his arms, more so than usual. Her limbs had stopped working and her body had simply fallen apart, laying limp. For a second, then, he’d thought she was dead. 

He didn’t think he could fear much after all the death and destruction he’d witnessed and wrought upon the world, but he’d felt utterly helpless then. Azula was in Ba Sing Se, and Mai was in Omashu, but Ty Lee and her bubbly personality had been at the North Pole that week, and he’d written to her and asked her to bring back their best healer. And so she had, a woman named Yugoda. She’d seemed rather excited about it too, showing him the old woman as though she was a child. He’d ignored her and placed her in the servant’s quarters. Normally Katara would meet with a healer much more often than a month in, but he’d been scared of losing her after the last episode. 

“She’s a waterbender,” he tells her. “She’ll help you.”

Katara blinks but doesn’t seem terribly enraged, and he calmly helps her out of the bed, reaching down to kiss her as she places a hand on his waist to keep her balance. He loves her so — _so_ much, in a way that’s so unquantifiable, so raw, and yet so delicate. 

He’s going to fix her. It can only get better than this. He will love her no matter who she is. “I have to go to a meeting,” he tells her, because he always does. “But I’ll get one of your girls in and you can get dressed, okay?”

She blinks, but he presses his mouth to her again, and she returns the force a little bit, in a way that makes it terribly difficult for him to stay away. He leans in to her and almost drops her onto the bed before remembering himself and smoothing out her hairline again. “Bad girl,” he teases. Nothing happens. Nothing happens — maybe she blushes, a bit, but nothing happens. 

He opens the door up for the lady that has been waiting outside to come in and goes to the war room. Azula has sent him a missive about a revolt in one of the colonies that she wants to personally burn down, but he can’t let her do that. He knows a little about public image. His ministers twitter as his flames stay uncontained, and eventually they decide to relocate one of the forces on Kyoshi Island to the colonies. The warriors there are scattered, as it is. Just a bunch of little girls — but he knows his own share of little girls, and he knows what they can do. 

He’s eighteen. He’s too young for this. He’s too — 

His breath stutters out into gasps as he walks back to his rooms to receive Katara, and small flickers of flame move around his arms and legs, cause him to sweat until he turns unbearably hot. He can’t do it. He’s losing control. He’s losing control. He won’t hurt her, though, so he thinks about her blue eyes and the way she turns red when he kisses her and moves inside to pick her up from their adjoined sitting room, where she’s laying on the couch, limp. His heart thuds again, heavy in his chest — but she’s okay. She’s fine. 

He reaches for a side cabinet and pulls out old scrolls, ones from her last general physician’s appointment. They haven’t seen one of those in ages, and he wants to refresh himself on the meal plan the kitchens insist she sticks to and the small herbs she has to mix into tea. He knows she takes them every morning with her breakfast. He grabs them and places them at his other side, across from her. He doesn’t know what the quiet old woman, the healer, will want from them. 

The royal healing wards, the quarters, are prepped for their arrival. The area, full of sickness, smells almost clean and sterile, and it’s decently far from their usual quarters. It’s been this way since the founding of the palace, to ensure that those who are struggling with the weaknesses of the body are kept far away from the unbreakable royals. But nobody discusses the evils of the mind which have corrupted the bloodline. Compared to Azula, Katara is an easy story, straightforward — a victim of circumstance, not blood. 

_A victim._

An old woman meets them at the door and pulls them through a series of hallways and doors. Katara slinks away at his side, as though she wants to back away, and he presses his hand to her spine, trying to heat himself up without sparking. “Don’t touch anything,” he says conversationally, as though she would speak, as though she would — would _touch._ She doesn’t acknowledge that, but perhaps she moves into his warmth. 

The healer’s room emits a strange glow, and when they walk in Zuko finds it somewhat reminiscent of one of Azula’s spas. And yet it is also different — a deep pool of water takes up half of the room, and it is lit by the grates underneath it. A woman stands at its edge, old and drawn, her fingers running the liquid through her fingers. It’s fascinating — to think that Katara could do that — and he’ll have her do it, again. 

To heal, of course, is an important skill. It’s something he knows she would love to do. 

“She doesn’t know combat,” the servant calls as she lets them in, respectfully bowing and leading them both to a bench in front of the healer. “Besides, the Fire Lord can defend himself.”

“Of course. Dismissed. Close the door.”

The woman nods and the door closes, leaving him alone with two waterbenders in a dark, glowing room. Both are broken _because of him —_

That does not matter. “Yugoda,” he says. The woman lifts up her head and stares at him, her eyes hollow. It’s unsettling, but he’s seen worse. He’s seen the Avatar’s death, and he’s killed plenty himself. What’s one more monster? And for a good deed, at that.

Her eyes fall on him first. “Fire Lord Zuko,” she spits in a way that’s between angry and incensed and tired. He couldn’t care less. But then she moves to Katara and gasps, deeply, as though she’s hallucinating. “Kanna?”

“Who’s that?” he frowns. “This is Katara.” Katara is at his side and she’s gazing at the pool, silver, somewhere, pooling into her eyes. “Katara, my —”

“Your _waterbender,”_ Yugoda shakes her head. “Perhaps — that does not matter. It’s been heard that the Fire Lord took a waterbender. I didn’t —”

“I don’t care what you think,” he says, thick. “This is Katara,” he lets his hand graze her shoulder, and she slides near to him as his body heat skyrockets. “She used to be able to waterbend, but she can’t anymore, and I need you to help her.”

Yugoda’s expression, at first haggard, softens as she spends a moment taking in Katara’s hazy look, the way she curls against Zuko and stares out into nothing. “I do not want to help,” she says simply. “I will not help the Fire Nation.”

“What does that mean?” Zuko snaps.

Yugoda looks forward. The water in her palms, the streams that had been running through her fingers, have fallen to the ground. “Poor girl. You have destroyed her.”

“Katara is _fine,”_ he says, defensively, pulling her close and close until she’s on his lap, against him. The papers lie, forgotten, on the floor. “She’s fine. She just needs her bending back. Help her.”

The old woman shakes her head, at first lightly and then violently, side to side. Her fingers lift up from the water and she presses her hunched back to the chair, blue eyes wide. “I feel pity for her, but I will not help the Fire Nation. I will not help the Fire Lord,” she repeats, as though crazed. “I am _not going to help the Fire Lord — “_

Katara feels limp again. He doesn’t like that — it feels so unfamiliar. He knows she’s alright, but he wants her to get her bending back. He wants her to be a person again, and he _knows_ that bending is the first step towards that — why is the universe conspiring against him? He wants to scream, maybe level the room, but he can’t do that. He takes in a deep breath and attempts to center himself and then prove his losses. “Do it for her,” he starts sharply, but then his voice breaks. “Or whoever Kanna is, for yourself. Please. Help her.”

Zuko takes Katara into his arms and leans forward as to present her to the old woman, who looks at the both of them with pity and fear. “I will not fix something you have broken, Fire Lord. You do not deserve peace.” 

_He has peace. He has everything._

It’s as though she’s looking into his soul. “Whatever she can give you, you do not deserve.”

He and Katara can love each other. He loves Katara, it’s the only thing he knows, and he wants her to love him. He wants Katara to love him. He and Katara can love each other. He loves Katara. He loves Katara. Katara can love him. She _can._

Zuko wants to burn something down but he doesn’t — he just leaves the old woman there in her corner, with her losses, because she will regret what she has just done — she will — she _will —_

He carries Katara in his arms all the way back to their rooms, through the palace, dressed in her red silks against their bed. Some days she is like this, so not here, so nonexistent. 

He hopes she will not remember this one, not remember the old woman’s eyes or her betrayal. She deserves better. He does not want her to know. 


End file.
